The Lord of the Plants and All His Bad Luck
by Najio
Summary: Green is a peculiar kid. He can talk to plants, has no memory of before he was twelve, and he can't even talk to express his frustration! Thankfully, he's found friends in people like Percy Jackson, and Thalia in pine tree form. But when someone poisons Thalia's tree, the Lord of Plants may have to take things into his own hands. Sequel to "Percy Jackson and the Kid he Ran Over."
1. Pointing Fingers

**It wouldn't fit before, but that wonderful summary is by SkinOfInk! Thanks, because the one I wrote... let us never speak of it again.**

**K, I'm not really going to bother recapping for people who haven't read the first one, Percy Jackson and the Kid He Ran Over, so just know that the main character is Green, the mute kid who can talk to plants, and that you should probably wait to read this until you know what's going on!**

**DISCLAIMER: If I were Rick Riordan, MoA would not have cliffhung like that! :P**

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><p>Green eyes, wide open in the soft hours right before dawn, gazed out into the blackness. Their owner let his hand tangle in the leaves of the small shrub, possibly a bonsai, which grew next to his bed. Demeter Cabin was full of plants, from wheat to barley, all in neat rows and <em>infuriatingly <em>polite. The longing grew in him again, to climb right out the window and find someone to talk to. He needed to talk to the maple. Yesterday, he'd asked it what he should call it, because 'the maple' just sounded… dumb. It had told him to call it Greg.

Sighing, Green sat up, his solemn expression cracking into a grin at the thought of… Greg. Could he- no. He _needed _sleep, the others were starting to notice the bags under his eyes. The humans, who he couldn't talk to because he had some kind of mental block or something, who probably wouldn't understand him if he tried to mime whatever it was that kept him up at night. Even better, he could just sneak off into the woods, after a quick chat with Thalia, the once human pine tree, and climb into some old cedar. The old trees would sing to him, a strange and somehow alien melody that eased him into his dreams softer than anything from an animal's throat.

But he couldn't, because then people would notice he'd snuck off again, and they'd give him that suspicious look, and he couldn't explain. So, he lay back and closed his eyes. It took a long while, tossing and turning all the way, for him to fall asleep.

LINEBREAK

Morning light streamed through the window, and a quiet nudging vibrated up through the leaves that still entangled his outstretched hand. Green's eyes opened slowly, still gummed with sleep. Rising, he blinked twice then bolted out the door, sprinting up the hill towards the lone pine, Thalia.

When he arrived, he stared uncomprehendingly for a second, and then rushed forward. Once a rich emerald, the thin leaves of Thalia's tree were a dry red, like rust. Sap dripped slowly from a hole in her trunk, and even as he watched more needles tumbled to the ground. Rushing forward, Green pressed his hand against the trunk, hoping against hope…

_THALIA!_ In his mind, his voice rose to a shriek, all the fear he couldn't set free coursing down his arm.

_Green? _ Her voice was soft and hesitant, and dry as sandpaper.

_What happened? _He asked, trying to keep the panic down. Tears started burning in the corners of his eyes.

_Poison, Luke, get Chiron._ She'd barely finished before he sprinted full out towards the big house, nearly bowling over several campers. One of them, probably from Ares, started cussing him out but he was too scared to care.

When he reached the door, he hammered on it hard enough to make his knuckles bleed a little, which snapped him out of his blind panic. Chiron opened the door in centaur form, and rather than waste time with a game of charades Green just grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the hill.

"Green, what- I see," he said, and called out to the dryads and satyrs. "Come! Thalia's tree has been poisoned!"

Once again, Green laid a hand gently on the trunk, not caring that his skin was all sticky from the sap.

_Thalia? _He asked, afraid he wouldn't get an answer.

_Camp,_ she said, _borders… not… stable._

Ripping a scrap of paper out of his pocket, and pulling a pen- pencils always felt a bit like cannibalism to him. So did paper, but he didn't know how to replace that- out from behind his ear. Scribbling as fast as he could, he wrote 'Borderz not staybel.' Looking at it, he winced. Spelling was not his strong suit. Still, it was better than nothing, so he handed it to Chiron.

The old centaur said gravely, "Green is right," yep, it was _totally _his idea, "our borders may soon fail without the tree. We must organize a patrol." Yeah, the poor camp, poor borders, but Thalia was _dying_, couldn't they do something? The look on his face must have shown some of what he was feeling, because he heard a voice behind him.

"Worried about your precious picnic spot, pretty boy?" Clarisse. He _so_ didn't need this right now. "You know, it's pretty suspicious how often you sneak off to sit over there." Great, of all the times for her to play detective… Green turned to face her, which was probably a bad idea. "Yeah," she continued, "I bet _he _poisoned it!" Thalia, he wanted to say, was not an it.

"Clarisse," Chiron warned, but he sounded… unsure. Like he doubted Green's innocence too but didn't want to cause a riot. Resentment, Green knew, was probably the whole reason why Kronos had attacked his father, why Luke had betrayed his, but right then he didn't care. A hot ball of anger was welling up in the pit of his stomach as he glared at the ugly daughter of Ares.

"Hey, looks like someone isn't too happy with me," she jeered. "Don't like me ratting you out, do you, _traitor_?" If he didn't scream soon, Green was just going to burst, pop like an overcooked hot dog over the campfire. He needed to vent, to do _something _to stop the burning in his insides, like they were full of molten lead. The edges of his vision were getting blurry and red.

"D-do you really think so?" Asked some kid from Demeter, a guy named Erin. He was about eight, and he practically worshipped everyone older than him. Green had thought of him as a little brother, and now this. Was he really _this_ untrustworthy? No one would accuse Percy like that, and he'd been around just as long.

"'Course," Clarisse said. "He's working for Luke, that's why he wanted to go on that quest so bad!" What came next hadn't really gone through Green's brain first. It came straight from the blazing anger in his gut and bypassed all the reasonable, sane parts of him, and without really planning to Green leaned back and socked Clarisse la Rue right in her beady eyes.


	2. The Human Torch

**I know, I took forever again... sowwy. But here it is, chapter 2! TA DA! :D So, anyone want to submit a summary? I'll give you credit and stuff! Just keep it a little shorter than the character limit, so I can fit your name! :P (I can't summary)**

**DISCLAIMER: Clearly, I am not Rick Riordan. He writes way better than this! L:P**

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><p>In the movies, dramatic things weren't allowed to happen unless it was raining, or snowing, or something. Still, even though the sun was shining, birds were chirping, and a gentle breeze was chattering through the trees, there were two very angry bronze bulls attacking the camp. Green, for his part, was banging on their metal flanks with a stick and not doing much good, while simultaneously trying not to get barbecued. Even worse than the bulls, Clarisse was on the hill as well, and she was probably angrier than the fire breathing automatons that seemed not to care about the camp borders all that much. The daughter of Ares being furious might have had something to do with the magnificent shiner he'd given her, and if she could get away with it she'd probably have stabbed him by now. Just another day.<p>

Bull number one decided that he was tired of Green dodging his fire, and went in for the kill with its horns. Having seen Percy do it once, he briefly considered trying to jump over, but he was rather fond of his kneecaps and didn't want them to have huge holes in them. Instead, he hit the deck, er, hill, and rolled between its thick bronze legs. Then, he whacked its belly with his club. No, even he couldn't call it a club with a straight face, it was a stick. About two feet long and fairly straight, the thing was about two inches thick with no handle. Still, it made a descent dent in bull one's chassis, if metal animals had those.

Unfortunately for him, metal bulls didn't like being hit with sticks. As his face was within a foot of one of its legs, bull one decided that it would give _him_ a dent. Cue the unexpected savior, aka Percy. Yelling something in Greek, his friend sliced the poor cow's metal snout right off. Rolling out from under it, pausing to whack the leg that almost caved his face in, Green somehow managed to end up on his feet.

"Hey," said Percy, dodging a column of flame, then sprinting off to help someone else. Annabeth ran over too, along with someone very tall that he didn't know. Before he could wave 'hi,' he heard someone screaming. One of the Ares campers was on fire, and everyone else seemed to be too busy avoiding the same fate to do much of anything about that. Cursing himself, Green sprinted towards the living bonfire and grabbed his still-flaming hand, swearing a little in Greek. He had no idea what he was saying, but he didn't really care. Finally, he jumped into the lake, pulling the Ares kid in with him. Of course, he couldn't just lay there at the bottom and wonder why he was so stupid that he had grabbed someone who was on _fire_, he had to grab the kid, who he suddenly realized was named Eric, again. He'd stolen Green's dessert once.

Shoving a soggy Eric onto dry land, he decided that now would be an excellent time to collapse in utter exhaustion. Too late, he realized that doing that would probably lead to being unconscious. Ah well.

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><p>When he opened his eyes and saw Percy and Annabeth looming over him with that concerned look they got when he fought monsters and then passed out. For some reason they always did that, but what was <em>really<em> disturbing was that Clarisse was looming right there with them, looking a bit less concerned. Well, she looked worried, but worried that he hadn't gone into a coma and died, not the other way around. He grabbed Percy's outstretched hand and stood, returning Annabeth's 'What the _heck_ were you doing unconscious' look glare for glare.

On the long trudge back, the question he had most dreaded was asked, by Percy, who sounded like he probably only wanted to know so he could send them flowers.

"Green," Clarisse told him, turning slightly pink.

"No," said Annabeth, "seriously, who hit you?" Hey, he could be violent sometimes if he wanted! He'd beat up the Nemean Lion. Granted, it had nearly killed him in the process, but still. Suddenly, he realized that it had probably only run off because it didn't think it was worth the splinters just to eat some random mortal… that explained a lot.

"I'm serious," she replied, the flush in her cheeks deepening. Apparently the only thing that would embarrass her about a black eye was that the mute wimp gave it to her. He really hated children of Ares sometimes. Clarisse started glaring at him even more, and if he hadn't been on the receiving end of _Hades' _evil glare he'd probably have run away screaming… well, not screaming, but wanting to scream. It didn't help that Percy couldn't seem to stop laughing.

Changing the subject is difficult when you can't speak, but he managed to get his point across by poking Percy in the shoulder and nodding in the direction of the big guy who he didn't know.

"Oh," Percy explained, "That's Tyson." Very helpful.

"He's a Cyclops," Clarisse added. Oh. _Oh._ A story came to mind that Thalia had told him once, about her, Annabeth, and that _traitor_ almost being eaten by a Cyclops. It was a pity Luke escaped. Still, why was he inside the camp? Well, maybe Cyclopes were like centaurs. Chiron was radically different from most of his kind, at least as far as Green knew. Tyson didn't _seem_ very bloodthirsty.

"So?" Percy asked, sounding ready to give her another black eye. Well… it did seem kind of important, like you wouldn't want to give him cool shades for his birthday or anything. And if he wasn't imagining things, it seemed not even Annabeth could shake off almost being lunch at age seven, because she was doing quite a bit of glaring herself, mostly at Tyson.

Finally, Clarisse of all people diffused the tension. "Alright, let's find Tantalus and tell him what's happened." Who?

"Tantalus?" asked Percy.

"The activities director." WHAT?! No one ever told him _anything_.

_Well, you never tell them anything either,_ came the usual sarcastic drawl of… Greg.

_I don't have much of a choice. Since when do we have a new activities director?!_

_I don't know, people don't tell me anything either, in fact I'm starting to wonder if they think I'm sentient. Also, do you have some problem with my name?_

_This is no time for your sarcasm. Why is there a new director?_

_All the time is a time for my sarcasm, and I'd guess Chiron was blamed for what happened to Thalia._

_That's even more ridiculous than blaming _me_, and I didn't think that was physically possible!_

_Who said anyone here was sane?_

That was when Green smacked his head on the doorway of the big house, and he vowed to pay more attention to his surroundings. Maybe he could find Thalia, see how she was doing. He was scared of tiring her out though. Deciding he probably couldn't help anyway, he hiked back up the hill, like he'd done a thousand times. Now though, the grass was yellowing, dying slowly along with one of exactly two friends he could talk to.

This time of day there weren't any nymphs or satyrs, playing music, trying to heal the tree. Sometimes it really bugged him that everyone seemed to only worry about the tree because of the camp borders. It wasn't their fault, they probably didn't know she was still alive in there, but still.

He'd meant to lay back and relax a little, maybe tell Thalia about the little weed that had used his hand to draw the most amazing artwork ever to decorate a napkin, but he ended up just collapsing. Chiron was gone. Thalia was dying, and he couldn't scream at the world for being so stupidly unfair. He couldn't even curse Luke for being a lying scumbag. So, he did the only thing he could to vent his frustration. He started crying, quietly in the grassy shade that had once been his favorite place. The worst thing was, it _was_ his fault. He hadn't done it on purpose, but if he'd gone out to talk with Thalia he'd, well…

_Get killed, or kidnapped, or just beaten to a bloody pulp. There's no way you could fight Luke_

_You know Greg, the voice of reason really spoils pointless guilt._

_Good. That kind of thing annoys me to no end. Now, stop your pointless crying._

_That's easier said than done._

_Shut up and train. If you want to tear Luke in half next time you see him, you'll need to know how to use a sword._

Sighing, Green stood up and started walking towards the weapons shed. He did kind of want to tear Luke in half. Well, thirds would be better. In fact, chopped to pieces like his master would be a fitting end to that… meh, he didn't know foul enough swear words.


	3. The Ship

**Okay, I updated really quickly for some reason... but whatever.**

**DISCLAIMER: Yes, I'm Rick Riordan, and I have 200 hours in my days, during which I write thousands of fanfictions in many different styles about my characters. While also working on Blood of Olympus. Gimme a break.**

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><p><em>You know,<em> Greg said in a conversational tone, _I didn't think it was possible to be this bad at anything._

_Hey!_ Green shot back angrily. To be fair, he _had_ tripped over his own foot no less than six times, impaled himself, luckily with the celestial bronze that couldn't hurt him, and somehow managed to slice his own cheek open, even though he couldn't cut himself with his sword.

_I'm really, really sick of this. How about you try arch- OH GOD NO NEVERMIND!_ The last time Green had tried to shoot an arrow, well, he'd hit the target… sort of… He'd eventually stomped off in frustration and somehow shot himself. Naturally, the arrow went straight through him and made a bull's eye. Percy had given him a rather impressed look, and Annabeth had made him promise never to touch a weapon made of steel, _ever_.

_Well,_ he said, realizing that decades of practice wouldn't get him up to the fighting ability of the average Aphrodite camper, let alone Luke, _I do fight way better with a stick._

_So. Now, instead of giving you play by play instructions on boxing with furies, I can tell you how to fend off the Minotaur with a stick. I hate you sometimes._ Green grinned evilly, and ducked into the woods in search of a quality weapon. Finally, he came across the most deadly-looking stick he'd ever seen. Smooth as satin, well he'd never actually seen satin, but he figured it was pretty smooth, six feet long and just the right thickness to fit into his hand.

_I'm like Little John in Robin Hood! I have a quarterstaff!_

_Unlike Little John though, you actually are little._

_Shut up!_ The sad truth was, he hadn't grown an inch. Not one little millimeter. The _really_ sad thing, even worse than not growing, was that everyone else did. Annabeth was… taller than him. That was depressing.

_Okay. Now… I don't think this is physically possible… but maybe you should have a spotter in case you accidentally push that stick through your ears. _Greg didn't sound like he was kidding.

As it turned out, he was pretty good with a quarterstaff. He couldn't hit very hard, but he did manage to beat up one dummy in the arena.

_It is time, my pupil. You must battle one of your peers. I hear Jodi Davis from Demeter has the flu._ Greg was enjoying this way too much. Of course, he didn't actually have a chance to have the fluff beaten out of him by Jodi Davis. The conch blew for campfire.

Unlike everyone else, Percy and Annabeth had actually filled him in on some of the details, like how Tantalus was apparently the spirit from the underworld that was surrounded by food and water but couldn't eat or drink it. If he really was evil enough to merit that kind of treatment, Green wasn't that thrilled by the idea of meeting him. In hindsight, he realized how he'd managed to miss such a crucial piece of camp news. Since punching Clarisse, he'd been avoiding camp. Kids were starting to throw him occasional sidelong glances, and he didn't want to hit anyone else. Still, really? Usually, he just walked into the dining pavilion without making eye contact with anyone, grabbed some food, and ran off to train, or talk with ancient, wise oaks. He didn't have ADHD like Percy, but he still couldn't stand more than a few minutes of their slow, steady way of talking. Those guys had all the time in the world, apparently.

At campfire, there was the usual awful corny singing that he definitely wouldn't have put up with without his two human friends next to him. He had exactly three human friends. How sad. Anyways, Green managed to stay awake until Percy and Annabeth announced their Plan. The word Plan needed a capital "P" because it was brilliant, phrased so that Tantalus couldn't refuse, _and_ it was designed to save Thalia. It was all he could do to keep himself from jumping up and hi-fiving the both of them.

_Finally, _Tantalus agreed to send them on a quest. Hopefully Percy and Annabeth would get that he would chain himself to one of their ankles and throw away the key if they didn't let him come. Then… "…will you take on this quest, Clarisse?" Well, his life sucked. Okay, he'd _deal_ with Clarisse, he didn't _care,_ and why was he bothering? It would take less than six seconds to convince the two masterminds of this plan to take on their own secret quest, even if he couldn't talk!

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><p>Somehow, it was taking way more than six seconds of hand-flapping to convey what he was trying to say. Okay, he'd have to do it. Green had been meaning to tell Annabeth, in writing obviously, about Thalia. Then, the tree had been poisoned, and he didn't want her to watch her friend die <em>again<em>. Still, if it would convince them, he should do it. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to have any paper. Before he could think of something to do, they both peeled off towards their separate cabins, leaving him standing there in the middle of the path. Crud.

Green decided that maybe he should walk down to the lake. Curfew was fast approaching, but he was still leaning on his staff and he thought he could outrun a harpy fairly easily. He'd done it before, when he couldn't sleep. Which was to say, he'd done it many times, nearly every other night. Maybe the water would help clear his thoughts.

_Good luck with that,_ Greg told him. He'd need it. The possibility was dawning on him that he might have to team up with his least favorite child of his least favorite god after all. Who he'd punched in the face. Maybe he could just strike out alone. Most monsters would just ignore a random mortal roaming around. But… what if Percy and Annabeth _did_ decide to run off on their own after the fleece? He'd need to be prepared. Jogging over to Demeter and snatching a pencil and some paper, he made his way to one of his favorite trees. It was an oak, but it didn't talk much at all. Instead, it liked to mumble incoherently. When he didn't try to focus on what it was saying, it made for a comforting background. Could trees go senile?

Ten minutes later, he'd written two lines.

_'I am comming. Peeriod,' _and _'I wont attrackt monsterrs aneeway.'_ Perhaps he shouldn't have jumped out of a window when they tried to school him; his spelling needed some serious work. Worn out by even those short lines, Green leaned back and listened to the quiet murmuring of his perch.

_Nomnilunimumigusimuminemn… Shouldimintyniminum… Herminumniesgifniumnies…_

Green's quiet reverie was broken by a shout. It almost sounded like…

"Help! Monsters!" came Percy's voice from the beach. Leaping out of his tree and landing on his heels with a small _crack_ that sent pain shooting up his legs, he sprinted off in the direction of his friend.

Percy looked fine. He acted fine. Had he been replaced by some kind of shape-shifting monster? Were there any of those in Greek legend? If this were a horror movie, Percy was definitely about to kill him, Annabeth, and Tyson. Green was snapped out of his thoughts when he spotted several duffel bags that his demigod friend definitely did not own. Clearly, either a god was at work here or the pod people needed four huge bags' worth of supplies to turn demigods.

It was established that Hermes, the god of messengers, had told Percy to board the cruise ship in the distance. It was also established that Tyson was not going. At least, that was what _Annabeth _had decided, but Percy and Tyson had different ideas. Wonderful, how was he going to mediate _this _one? The thing was, he definitely understood why Annabeth didn't want the Cyclops to come along. Still, Green had a soft spot for the big guy, and if anyone could disprove the idea that all Cyclopes liked eating people, it was Tyson. So, he stayed quiet. Eventually, the harpies forced the four of them to book it, and their kindergarten-aged monster friend couldn't stay behind or he'd be eaten. That was one way to solve an argument.

The hippocampi that surfaced, at least according to Annabeth that was what they were called, were probably the most beautiful creatures he'd ever seen. Ever. And the four illegal questers got to _ride _them. This day was taking turns in positive directions. Once they reached the ship, a nagging sense of something very wrong started in his gut.

_No people. None. Ship this size, there ought to be at least one person looking for the bathroom right about now. Or a night watchman. Do cruise ships have those?_ Green knew Greg was right, there was something wrong with how eerily quiet it all was. Still, a demigod, or mortal, needed his/her sleep. He leaned his new weapon against the wall of one very deserted cabin, shut his eyes and tried _really hard_ to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.

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><p>Evidently, he had managed to fall asleep, because he woke up to the sound of a creepy announcement in an Australian accent informing everyone about today's… disemboweling practice? Lovely. Standing up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he grabbed his stick, no, quarterstaff, and peeked out the door. Many dazed looking zombie-passengers were wandering around, talking in flat, disinterested tones about how much fun they were having. Wonderful.<p>

Soon after their alarming wake-up call, they passed a door, and then it all went wrong. Tyson, who apparently had some super-human hearing, began recounting a conversation he heard behind the door, in the _exact tones_ of the people talking. One of those people was _Luke_. He knew about how Cyclopes could mimic peoples' voices, but it was way creepier in person, especially as he was mimicking the voice of Green's least favorite person in the entire universe.

Naturally, they were found out. And, just to add insult to injury, there was the whole _we overheard our enemies talking about how they knew we were listening in and still got caught_ cliché, which was funny in movies but really embarrassing in life. Meanwhile, that familiar burning, leaden sensation was building in his gut again, and maybe if he was lucky he could give Luke a black eye too. His most powerful weapon seemed to be the fact that no one believed he could ever hurt them. It took them by surprise when he attacked.

As the traitor went on and on about his evil plans, monologueing on top of everything else, the rage built in Green until he just couldn't stand it anymore. Luke's words, the defiant replies of Percy and Annabeth, who seemed to be taking this whole thing very personally. Gee, why could that be? Still, if he thought he couldn't possibly be any angrier…

"You poisoned Thalia's tree!" Annabeth yelled, less angry than she would be if she knew the whole story, but still somewhat less than civil.

"Yeah, I poisoned the tree. What of it?" What of it. _What of it. WHAT OF IT?!_ If he didn't do something, he would explode. Right then, he would've sold his soul to send Luke's horribly maimed body right down into Tartarus, and laugh maniacally the whole time. But he couldn't. He couldn't yell at Luke that she was still alive, still conscious, and dying slowly _because of him,_ and she'd been his _friend,_ and Annabeth and Grover. All of them, stabbed in the back. Somehow, Luke had still managed to delude himself into thinking anyone in their right mind would _ever_ join his cause, without first being a pathetic excuse for a human being, but he couldn't say that. He couldn't even scream in frustration, howl at the world, and the rage just kept building inside.

Finally, he opened his mouth and released all the rage and fire within into a primal cry so loud it hurt his ears, and burned his throat, but he didn't care. The sound wasn't even human, it was just an endless, wordless scream at Luke for existing, for befouling the world with his presence. He poured all his black rage and desire to rip out that _monster's_ throat, and leaped forward.

Within the red haze that was his vision, he was vaguely aware of the open mouth and wide eyes of Percy, the bemused expression that seemed the closest to utter disbelief that Tyson could manage, and just a blank look from Annabeth. He'd managed to shock her so much she'd forgotten how to look speechless. As for Luke, it took him five whole seconds to realize that that wimpy little mute kid seemed to be going for his throat.

Green managed to wrap his hands around one very evil neck, and had begun to wring it with all the strength he possessed, plus several gallons of adrenaline, before Luke's goons stepped in. He managed to see with pleasure that his target looked like he was in at least a _little_ pain before he was smashed against a wall and his vision went black.


	4. The Raft

**Okay, I have nothing to say, so let's just move on to the disclaimer, shall we? .-.**

**DISCLAIMER: I AM TOTALLY RICK RIORDAN! AND NO, I WILL NOT CLEAN UP ALL THIS SARCASM ON THE FLOOR. I DON'T CARE IF IT WAS ME WHO SPILLED IT!**

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><p>When he opened his eyes and found that he was surrounded by brilliant white light, Green knew he was dead. It was a shame, he'd never spoken a word. He'd never gotten his memories back either, or killed Luke... A sudden chill passed down his spine as he realized he didn't like <em>any<em> of his choices for afterlife, while the whole point of all this heroism was supposedly to find a place in Elysium. Then, he realized that if he was dead, his head _really_ shouldn't hurt this much. Or his arms. Or… well, it seemed like his entire body was having a very unpleasant contest to see which nerve could hurt most.

"Ouch," he groaned.

For some reason, Percy and Annabeth were staring at him. Wait, had he just said that out loud?! Then, she started giggling. _What alternate universe did we end up in?_ Green wanted to ask, but then Percy started laughing too, and Tyson joined in. The Cyclops didn't seem to have much of a clue what was going on either, but whatever.

"Your first word!" Annabeth managed, in between gasps for breath.

"…was ouch!" finished Percy, actually tipping over backwards.

"Thanks for that," Green said, more to hear what he sounded like than anything else. His voice was quiet, a relief after whatever animal noise he had made before, slightly higher pitched than Percy's and a bit scratchy, probably because he hadn't used it in at least a year. It was softer than when he spoke to plants, but somehow less echo-y and much more down-to-earth, like it belonged in his ears as much as his other voice made its place in his mind.

"Where are we?" he asked, slowly as his tongue flopped around in his mouth, trying to remember how it made the sounds. He hoped it had some luck with that, because he didn't remember squat from pre-weird-and-surreal-dream. He did remember _that _much of the first time he'd woken up, that odd disquieted feeling you get when you spent your sleeping hours wandering around in an Escher painting. There was an entire book of them in the Athena cabin, which he'd kindof-sortof stolen once... Annabeth was _never_ to know.

"That is definitely not what I expected you to sound like," Percy told him. "I always thought you'd sound…"

"…higher pitched," finished Annabeth. Well then. He needed to tease them about that finishing each others' sentences business soon, but this probably wasn't the time.

"But," Percy said, "to answer your question, we're on the escape raft." Duh.

"Yeah? I thought we were treading water," Green loved sarcasm even more out loud.

"Great, another smart-" Percy started, before Annabeth clapped a hand over his mouth. "Mmph!" Green laughed. It felt good, like someone was filling his chest with helium. He felt kinda... floaty. Hmm... he'd always wanted to completely blow someone's mind, and now seemed the best of all possible times.

"So, I think there's something you guys should know."

"Yes?" asked Annabeth, looking confused.

"I can talk to plants." The silence stretched.

"Glaargh," Percy said intelligently, sounding like his mind had been slightly blown.

"Wait, I thought you were a mortal," Annabeth said, looking more confused than he'd ever seen her. _Note to self, make sure shock people often. The look on their faces is hilarious!_

"All I know is that plants keep calling me 'lord.' It's really annoying." The look on Percy's face was nothing short of art. It was as if he'd hit him over the head with a sledgehammer, and then made a second pass with a brick.

"Okaaay..." replied Annabeth, who seemed to be having some difficulty forming complete sentences. This was _fun!_ But there was something he really needed to do, and the sooner the less-likely-that-he'd-be-stabbed.

"Um…" His first awkward pause! Glorious! "You know how Thalia got turned into a tree?"

The worst thing was that Annabeth didn't get it for a second. Then, her eyes widened with dawning horror. This, was less fun.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything, but…"

"LUKE!" There was that rage she'd been missing. She plunged her dagger into the seat of the raft where it stuck, quivering. Maybe she was imagining that spot was Luke's forehead too.

"Yeah, that was why I kinda…"

"Flipped out?" Percy offered.

"Tried to strangle him?" Annabeth suggested.

"Yeah."

"When I see him again, I'm gonna KILL him!" she said, her voice making up with intensity what it lacked in volume. Scaryscaryscary-

"Green can talk now?" interrupted Tyson, looking excited. Annabeth winced, and Green decided that letting him come might be causing a bit of tension, even though he liked the guy. Crud. Then, he had an epiphany.

"AAAARRRGHH!" he screamed in frustration at the top of his lungs, making Percy jump a foot in the air and Annabeth, from the sideways look she was giving him, start to wonder about his sanity. "I've wanted to do that for a long time now!"

"Any particular reason?" asked Annabeth, in exactly the same tone she might use to ask a serial killer why he liked using cleavers. Okay... that was a frightening analogy.

"Well…" he took a breath, "there was that time when I tried like six times to tell you about the tree issue, and just ended up seeming creepy, and then when you guys insisted on eating Medusa's burgers, and pretty much every time Percy opened his mouth within a mile of Ares-"

Annabeth shot Percy a smirk at that. "And then, there was this apple that kept trying to turn me to the dark side."

"Uh… what?" asked Percy, sounding like his brain couldn't take how extra-weird the plant half of the world turned out to be. Neither could Green's, most of the time.

"Yeah. It was all, 'Hey, I bet you could show everyone up by stabbing them in the back,' and I was all, 'Kronos sends apples to recruit his warriors?'" As they were human, well sort of, Percy and Annabeth cracked up at this point. "But mostly I really wanted to do that since people started blaming me for poisoning the tree…"

Blank stares are very scary when you just suggested that people thought you were a traitor.

"Really?" asked Percy, sounding like he was starting to worry about the camp's sanity.

"That's why I hit Clarisse." More cracking up ensued.

"I can't believe you managed to land one!" Annabeth said, laughing some more at the memory of the daughter of Ares' red face.

"I think I took her by surprise." Percy gave him a fist bump. Being able to talk was awesome! Still grinning like an idiot and not really caring, Green leaned back and closed his eyes, enjoying the sunshine on his face. This was how life should be.

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><p><strong>PLOT TWIST!<strong>


	5. Under the Sea

**Does anyone want to make a summary? I guess I will soon... but just add one in the reviews! Anything would be better than mine :P**

**DISCLAIMER: Yes, there is indeed a person named Rick Riordan. He might actually go on this site occasionally, to see what people did with his story (I know I would), but... I'M NOT HIM! There. DISCLAMITORY!**

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><p>Blue skies, dotted with fluffy white clouds stretched overhead. <em>Maybe<em>, Green thought, _the weather did reflect your mood sometimes._ Perhaps it was the thoughtful look on his face, or how quiet he was, but Annabeth scooted over. "Hey," she nudged him. "You okay?" _Okay?!_ He'd just learned how to talk, this was the best he'd felt in a while. A wide grin spread across his face, and he gave her a double-thumbs-up. "Okay, but… you can still talk right?" Green nodded, still smiling. "Um…" Oh, right.

"Yeah," he said. Out loud. He still hated Luke, but if they managed to steal the fleece and rescue Grover, he might not want to rip his throat out anymore.

"Okay," she said, "but you're being really quiet." He raised an eyebrow. "Not like before, but I'd expect you to be babbling nonstop right about now. Shrugging, Green glanced around, and froze.

"Land ho!" He shouted. Even his shout was soft, he probably wouldn't intimidate monsters all that much. But… he'd _always_ wanted to say that! And land there was, a huge coastline in fact, cut through by a river. Trees lined its banks, their leaves whispering in the breeze. Still, their presence begged the question… how was he still alive? Their raft had been out on the open sea for a long time, with not a tree in sight.

Sticking his hand in the water, Green found the answer. A strand of seaweed trailed from his forefinger to his wrist, wet and slimy.

_Hello. Thanks for keeping me alive!_ He told it, wondering if it really counted.

_No problem,_ it said in _the exact same tone Percy used_. That was the creepiest thing he'd ever heard!

_What did I do? _The poor little… whatever it was sounded ready to grow legs and dive overboard.

_No, it's just that you sound exactly like a human friend of mine, which I wasn't expecting…_

"Hey!" Percy waved his hand in front of Green's face, looking amused. "Talking to seaweed?" He nodded. Apparently, that last statement had been sarcasm, because Percy looked _very_ confused. He returned the strand to his natural habitat, thanking it, and was surprised by the medley of images that came from the water itself. Microscopes, the slides within, and tiny one-celled pieces flashed across his vision. Algae!

"Wait, you can talk to seaweed?" Annabeth piped in, looking like she was having trouble with this.

"It's a plant, isn't it?" He replied. "Also, it sounded exactly like Percy."

"Okay…" said demigod replied. Then, there was a thud. Three long spikes had appeared about three inches from Green's face, and a small cut was trickling blood down his forearm. Then, they shot back into the water as quick as they'd come. An attack like that would've scared him senseless regardless, but a large hole was now sending tons of seawater to board their raft, and he had never really learned to swim all that well. He could drag someone out of a lake, with naiads helping, but the ocean was much deeper. And the lake didn't have a sea monster, which probably wouldn't help him improve his breaststroke.

"Woah-" Percy started, but then a head emerged from the water. It was huge, bigger than Green's whole body, and slimier than the seaweed. Water streamed down its dark green scales, and when it opened its mouth it revealed three rows of teeth as sharp as Annabeth's knife. A barbed tongue, ending in a bony spike, flicked out of its mouth and stabbed Percy right in the chest, but as soon as it retreated under the water, the wound began to close. He didn't have his stick.

Well, this boat was going down anyway, so he ripped off a huge splinter from the side and hefted it. Barely managing to leap aside before the tail gave him a new mouth, he stabbed sideways, imagining the sinewy hide was Luke's face. The monster's blood was midnight blue and freezing cold, as flecks of it peppered his hand. Annabeth managed to slice off one spike on the end before it retreated into the water, darkening the surface.

Their raft, being rather badly damaged at that point, promptly sank. Green, having had very little experience treading water, followed suit. Strangely enough, drowning didn't feel all that bad. It was peaceful underwater, bubbles tickling his face and seaweed swaying in the current. Naturally, his scaliness had to go and ruin his death by trying to bite his head off. Remembering the Nemean Lion, he let it approach, not that he had much choice, and plunged his arm, spike in hand, down its throat. Buffeted by its thrashing, he barely managed to yank his arm lose, now without much of a weapon, before the jaws slammed shut. Red, human blood floated up from his arm in a huge purple cloud, mixing with the water.

Just as his eyes were closing, he felt Percy grab his injured arm, hard. The pain woke him up, and he began to kick as best as he could with his feet. Air, beautiful clear freezing air filled his lungs, along with a mouthful of water. Coughing, he was hauled onto the nearest bit of wreckage. Tyson seemed to be able to tread water without much effort, and Annabeth was clinging to her own plank of their raft.

Having a son of Poseidon on board is an excellent way to speed up a plank. Barely a minute had passed before he was crawling up onto the muddy banks of whatever state they were in. Pennsylvania? Meh.

"Everyone okay?" Asked Percy, looking around. They were, oddly enough.

"What did you do?" Annabeth demanded, "It came up again, but it just roared and twisted around." Her eyes drifted towards the bloody mess that used to be Green's right arm. "What happened?!"

"I stabbed it in the throat," he replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, "but I might need some bandages or something…" That was an understatement. All his skin below the elbow was dyed red from the shredded skin that was his souvenir. Each cut, and there were at least twelve, started shallow and deepened as they raked down his forearm. On the underside of his arm there were others, but they weren't nearly as bad, just scratches. Still… something should probably be done before he passed- he collapsed, Annabeth grabbing his good arm to steady him, eyes drooping shut.


	6. Mystery Donuts

**Er...**

**...**

**Plz dunz kill meh! I know I was on a really long hiatus... (REALLY LONG?! YOU WERE GONE FOR MONTHS!) yeah... but the next chapter is here |**

**and it is pretty long if I do say so myself. So, I just want to apologize for how ridiculously long it took for this to come up. I just got really V**

**unmotivated for some reason, so next time I try and pull any of this nonsense, just start yelling at me. Yup.**

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><p>Pain is a terrible way to wake up, because you can't just slap a button and make it <em>shut up<em>. Green tried to ignore the throbbing in his arm (he was _really_ tired), but eventually he gave up and opened his eyes. He was surrounded by leaves and branches, which didn't fit. They'd been on a plank near the shore when he'd passed out, and now it looked like he was in some kind of lean-to.

"You're alive!" Percy's face loomed over him, still blurrier than he would have liked, and Green nodded. Which… probably wasn't the most intelligent response, but he _had_ been mauled by a sea monster. Speaking of which, he needed to see what exactly had befallen his right arm. If it was missing, he was going to strangle _someone_, he didn't care who, which would be pretty difficult with one arm, but he'd manage!

Either someone had laid a heap of bandages next to him, or he still had two arms. He began unwrapping them, wincing at the sight of blood on the bottom layers.

"Hey, are you sure you should…" Percy trailed off when he saw the flesh beneath the linen. Well, Green wasn't sure if they were linen, but he'd heard of linen bandages. The cuts weren't as bad as they had seemed before, which was good. The problem was that there were a _lot_ of them. It looked kind of like a crazed geometry teacher had carved them into his flesh, shrieking "PARALLEL LINES! PARALLEL LINES!" or something… wait, what?! He decided that he would check himself into the nearest mental institution if he ever made an analogy like that again, and continued staring at his arm. Each slice was perfectly parallel to the next, and they were about a centimeter apart. The deepest bits on the back of his hand were maybe two millimeters deep, which wasn't bad. He tried to lift his arm.

"Ah!" he yelped, letting his arm fall.

"You okay?" Percy asked. Green was sure that one day Percy would give him that concerned look and he'd just melt like a snowman in Death Valley. He nodded, deciding not to move his hand.

"Where are the bandages?" he asked, and Percy tossed them over to Green's left. He reached out, and missed. The white roll bounced off his head and landed on his chest. Great, his left hand was _completely useless_.

"Sorry!" Percy said, looking horrified.

"I'm fine. Didn't hit my arm." Green began wrapping white strips gingerly around the shredded skin. It looked worse than it was, but it was still pretty bad. Then, he tied the bundle around his chest, looping bandages behind his head so it made a crude sling.

"Hey, are you sure-"

"Yes." Shakily, Green stood, wincing as pain lanced up his arm. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but it was bearable. He would be worse than useless if he didn't do something about fighting with his left hand. Knowing him, he'd probably manage to whack his injured arm, but he didn't care. Well, not yet. He'd probably care quite a lot if he really _did_.

Just as he was about to leave the hut, he ran headlong into Annabeth. He somehow turned himself so that his left shoulder took the brunt of the collision, but he still nearly passed out again.

"Green!" She yelled, grabbing his left arm and dragging him upright. "What are you _doing_?!"

"Ouch…" was all he could seem to force out between his clenched teeth. Then, of course, Tyson charged through the opening, sending both of them sprawling. Green managed to land on his back, but the second shock was too much for him, and this time he _did _black out. When he opened his eyes again, Annabeth and Percy were standing over him, and Tyson had started bawling.

"_Ouch_." That had hurt. Obviously, but his brain was still a bit fried, and 'ouch' was all it could come up with. Still, it hadn't been Tyson's fault… well, it was Green's fault too, so he sat up and said, "It's okay big guy, I'm fine." Then he registered what Tyson was carrying. "Um… are those donuts?"

"Yes. Percy said to get donuts." What? WHAT?!

"That's it," he said, "I hereby _demand_ to see the chairman of the universe. WHAT?! WHY ARE THERE DONUTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST?! WHAT KIND OF SICK JOKE IS THIS?!" Annabeth made an honest effort to keep a straight face, but Percy just laughed.

"Tyson, seriously," Percy said, once he'd composed himself, "where did you get those?"

As it happened, some idiot had opened a donut shop in the _middle of the forest_ and somehow hadn't gone out of business yet. That screamed monster so loudly that Green was having trouble reading the sign, and he didn't do the _absolutely obvious_ for a good thirty seconds. Hmm, there's a mysterious… uh… donut shop in the middle of the woods. Gee, it sure would be nice if there were someone around they could talk to who had been here for forty years or so…

_Hello._ Green told the tree next to him.

_You need to leave. Now._ It replied, sounding like it was trying not to panic.

_What now?_ He asked, more tired than afraid. Ugh, when this was over he was just going to hibernate until next summer, when someone dragged him out of his cave or whatever and told him to head in X direction for Y days with Percy and Annabeth to find N object or person. That seemed to be how these things went.

_Hydra!_

_YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS! _Green shrieked, fully aware that it was, but sort of hoping it would be like 'Yeah, I'm kidding. You should go eat some donuts now."

"Hydra," He stated without expression. There was no scream loud enough, and their many-headed friend might hear him.

"WHAT?!" Apparently the others hadn't yet accepted that sometimes there just wasn't any way to do the situation justice by volume.

"Plan. Now," he told Annabeth.

"What? You guys have to help too, you know!" Green giggled, he just couldn't help it. He'd remembered his plan for Hydra slaying, which was "suitably insane" and totally wouldn't work, that he'd worked out beneath Thalia's tree. OH GOODY! There weren't any sacrificial braziers around here, but...

"Annabeth, how fast do you think you could start a fire?" Hopefully, there were some matches in that shelter, or they were dead.

"Too late," Percy said. When the other two whirled around, they had to dive out of the way to avoid huge blasts of flame. Wait! Huge blasts of flame? Green grinned evilly, deciding once and for all that he was never going to do anything this stupidly insane again.

"Percy!" He yelled, "Stick your sword in its fire blasts!" That earned him an incredulous look, which he knew to mean, 'You finally lost it, huh?" He'd used it many times before. "That's how Heracles killed it! He burned the stumps!"

Despite thinking (for fairly good reasons) that Green was insane, Percy shoved his sword into the next blast of fire, wincing as tongues of flame licked at his hands. His next stroke lobbed off the nearest head with a dull thud, and they waited with baited breath… well, ran around screaming and trying not to be eaten, as the stump completely failed to grow a new head.

Laughing a bit too maniacally, Percy continued slicing his sword at the monster, occasionally plunging it into new fireballs. You would think it would stop breathing fire, but monsters were really not the sharpest tools in the barn. Then, all three of them were sent flying by a huge _bang_, and Green wondered whether modern hydras had learned to breathe dynamite too.

Then, he noticed a huge metal warship and shot to his feet, which took a while. He only had one arm and his legs hurt like crazy, so he wasn't too surprised. Staring at the ship, he noticed a very familiar and very ugly face, with one very, very beautiful black eye. Green reached out and grabbed the nearest stick. He'd need it.


	7. Talking Sense

**Eh heh... DON'T KILL ME! It's been over a month... again... :( I've just not had the- ah never mind, I'll just put this up, shall I?**

**/o **

** \o 3**

**Oh, yeah!**

**KJtheELMtree/Beth M: Yeah, we all have our derp moments. Like that time my friend keeps reminding me about, when I forgot my own birthday... (DON'T JUDGE ME YOU ARE JUDGING ME!) Cool idea though! ;)  
><strong>

**Oh yeah! I have new cover art! And this is a long chapter! :D Does that redeem me? A little? :(**

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><p>There are certain bits of advice out there that, if taken, can save you a whole lot of trouble. For instance, it's a terrible idea to shove your bare arm into a wood chipper, or to antagonize a pit full of vipers. One such tidbit is to never, <em>ever<em> punch an Ares camper in the face. Ever. They hold grudges about things like that, especially when the fist in question belongs to a short, scrawny kid who can't even talk. For some reason, they also insist on showing off their huge steam-powered warships with war canons of death, engines that seem ready to explode any second, and FLIPPING ZOMBIES. Confederate zombies, which disliked Percy for no apparent reason and gave Green the evil eye whenever possible. As uncomfortable as it was, it made sense that they hated him. He _had _punched their leader in the face, and he _had _enjoyed it. They didn't like Percy because he was from New York. Go figure.

Green had held onto his stick, but a zombie probably wouldn't be all that fazed if he managed to break a couple of fingers. _If_ he could break their fingers, or even their nails. He was pretty much helpless, and was starting to kind of wish he hadn't hit Clarisse. Only kind of.

The proud captain of her warship, herself, showed the four of them around, pointing at things that looked deadly and things that looked practical and things that the engineers had probably only added to the ship to make it look extra-impressive. All the while, she kept giving him a very off-putting glare and not-so-thinly veiled threats. He was starting to miss the hydra. Tyson probably wasn't helping matters by insisting that Annabeth hold his hand because he was afraid of the confederate sailors. Green had held out his hand for the Cyclops to hold instead, but he was having none of it. Maybe monsters could be like the baby animals he'd read about during his month of schooling that imprinted on humans. Either way, he needed to at least _try_ to talk to her about it, because she looked ready to make Percy an only child.

Somehow, Percy managed not to antagonize Clarisse any more than necessary, or at least expected, and she didn't tear Green's throat out. That was probably about as civil as anyone involved could have expected that particular ship tour to go.

When their forced tour finally ended, Clarisse served them dinner. Well, she had her zombie friends serve them dinner. There was a white linen table cloth and fancy china, which _really_ didn't work with the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips. Green spent the meal trying very hard not to throw up due to vertigo from the incongruent food, and a sinking sensation in his gut that probably had something to do with being in close proximity to an angry daughter of war.

"Tantalus expelled you for eternity," Clarisse informed them, while Percy was eating so fast that Green was sure he was going to choke, and he himself was trying not to be too conspicuous about not eating anything. He was starving, but the bread, peanuts, and potato chips on the table were all plant-based, and he also wasn't sure if she was above poisoning him. "Mr. D says that if you ever come back, he's gonna turn you into squirrels and run you over with his SUV." That seemed… unnecessarily complicated. Why not just kill them?

"Did they give you this ship?" Percy asked. What? So when Percy led a quest, he got a sword, but when it was Clarisse's turn, they gave her a _battleship_?! That was _so_ unfair!

"No, my dad did!" she replied, as if it was obvious.

"Ares?" Percy asked, before Green could open his mouth. Was he the only one that actually thought before he started spewing words?

"Your dad isn't the only one with sea power," she said smugly, "All the souls on the losing side of a war owe a tribute to Ares."

"So, Ares-" Green began, but he was interrupted by odd spluttering noises coming from Clarisse. Percy looked around, realized that he was the only one close to her seat, and reluctantly started pounding her on the back.

"Did you just _talk_?!" she demanded, as soon as she could breathe again, her face red from lack of oxygen.

"No," he told her, smirking. Perhaps that wasn't the best idea. She lunged out of her chair and grabbed the front of his t-shirt, pulling him forward until they were nose to nose.

"Point taken," he said shakily, squirming away from her while Percy and Annabeth gave the two of them looks that might have been worried, or just surprised. "I learned, uh, yesterday?" It felt like years ago, maybe because he'd been almost killed so many times since then. She opened her mouth and began opening and closing it, completely failing to make any noise. An evil grin was pretty much impossible to stop after that, so he didn't try. After almost as much careful consideration and forethought as Percy put into his talks with Ares, he started cackling maniacally.

"Are you okay?" asked Percy, looking very worried about his sanity.

"Stop doing that!" Annabeth told him when he _still_ didn't stop.

"Sorry, couldn't resist," he replied, grinning at the speechless daughter of war. When you punch someone in the face, it is sometimes possible to blow their mind so completely that they forget it ever happened, although he had his doubts on whether or not it would work on her. She knew how to hold grudges. Still, it never hurt to try.

"So…" Green said, trying to unfreeze the conversation, "You were saying, about owing tribute to Ares?"

"Uh, yes," she replied, stumbling a little, "They have to pay tribute to Ares, and that's their penalty for being defeated."

"So, all your fathers' minions are the ones that _lost_ wars?" Green asked, for once forgetting to think first. "That seems like a terrible way to recruit… uh…" he trailed off as a shadow loomed over him, and turned to see a huge zombie, six-three at least, with huge muscles staring at him. "Then again, some of the best generals just ended up on the wrong side, and the soldiers can hardly help it if some stray gunfire hits them!" he concluded, putting on his best 'I'm an idiot please don't kill me' grin.

"Any more comments, shrimp?" she asked pointedly, smirking. Shrimp, like it was somehow _his_ fault that he was short and skinny. The nerve of some people, and their zombies. "These guys are completely loyal. They'll do anything I tell them to." Oh, she sucked at inspiring loyalty in the troops! The captain, who had been looming over _him_ a minute ago, was now trying visibly not to loom over her. He hated her, Green could tell from the stiffness in his jaw. Wonderful, these zombie guys hated _all_ of them, except Annabeth, and all because she lived in Virgina. Maybe if they decided to stage a coup she could talk them down.

"Clarisse," Annabeth broke in, "Luke might be after the fleece too." There was a hard edge to the way she said 'Luke' now, Green noticed. He'd poisoned one friend too many, apparently. "He's got the coordinates and a cruise ship full of monsters."

"Good," Clarisse said, "I'll blow him outta the water."

"Um…" Green said, mindful of the zombie that hadn't moved from its position by the door, "You might want to‒"

"Shut up, shrimp."

"Look," Annabeth said, giving him a 'You aren't helping' look, "We need to combine forces. Let us help!"

"No! This is _my_ quest, and you two are not stealing my chance!" She glared at Annabeth, daring her to argue.

"What about your cabin mates?" Percy asked, with his usual display all the sensitivity and tact equal of a cinderblock. "You were allowed to bring friends, weren't you?" Green was just close enough to kick him under the table, and his bare feet meant that his idiot friend got the point without yelping or something.

"They didn't, I, uh, I let them stay behind, to protect the borders." Great, now he had to feel sorry for _Clarisse_ of all people too. He wanted to yell at Percy for being an insensitive jerk, _again_, but that would just wound her pride even more.

"So even the kids in your own cabin didn't want to help you?" Green slammed his head down on the table, hard enough to make him see stars. He hadn't really planned it, but the pain in his head made it easier to bear the incredible stupidity of Percy.

"Shut up, Prissy!"

"Yeah," he muttered in Percy's ear, trying not to move his lips too much, "Shut up Prissy!"

"I don't need their help," she said, her face beet red. Green exchanged one helpless glance with Annabeth, who looked torn between saying something and pushing Percy into the river, and decided to pipe in.

"Yeah, well the rest of your cabin would probably just get themselves killed anyway. I've seen them fight you in the arena." Subtlety wasn't exactly his strong point, but he had to do _something_. He didn't like Clarisse much, but still, that was harsh.

"Shut it shrimp!" _No, no, your gratitude is all the payment I require_, he thought sarcastically.

"Clarisse‒" Percy began, but Green cut in as soon as he realized who was talking, _again_.

"Uh, Percy, would you mind if I talk to you outside for a second? I think I dropped something in the water while we were on the tour." Annabeth was glaring at him, which he supposed was fair. That must have been the most transparent excuse she'd ever heard. Well, at least he was doing something. He grabbed Percy's arm and forcibly dragged him out of the cabin. Fortunately his friend wasn't resisting, or he wouldn't have budged an inch.

"_You idiot!_" He whispered as loudly as he dared.

"What?" Percy asked. Was he really that stupid?!

"You basically just said, 'Oh, you're a worthless human being with no friends!'" Green said, going a bit above a whisper now.

"Huh?"

"Are you seriously that clueless?! Let's hope you never end up dating someone, if you can't avoid the basic 'Everyone hates you' line!" Green was trying very, very hard not to start shouting now. _AAAAAAAAAAARGH!_ He screamed in his head, hoping it would relieve some of the pressure. It didn't.

"I didn't mean it like that…" Percy said, looking uncomfortable. Exasperated, Green brought his hand up and smacked himself in the face.

"Just don't open your mouth unless you think first, _please_?" He said, his voice muffled by his palm.

"Uh, okay," Percy said, looking guilty. Sighing, Green walked back into the cabin with Percy right on his heels.

"Right! Um, it turns out I had it the whole time!" he said, grinning and holding out a sock that had been living in his pocket. Last year, Grover had suggested that he just wear socks if he hated shoes that much. Green had also cut out the heels of both socks, so that he could still talk to grass without reaching down, but that made them pretty much useless. "Not sure where the other one is…"

"Look," Clarisse said, ignoring Green in favor of glaring at Annabeth, "I am _not_ going to fail, and I don't care what Tantalus wants! Just mind your own business!"

"He's setting you up," Annabeth said, looking her right in the eye.

"I don't _care_!" Clarisse shouted, turning red. "I'm finishing this quest, and you aren't helping me! Still, I can't let you go." What? WHAT?!

"So… we're prisoners?" Annabeth asked.

"Guests. For now."

"What? Either we can leave, and we're guests, or we can't!" Green said indignantly. "That's what the monsters always say, 'No, don't kill us! We aren't imprisoning you to eat you, you're just our guests!'" Perhaps that wasn't the best way to handle the situation, but he didn't like the idea of being trapped on a zombie infested steamboat while Thalia slowly died.

"Captain," Clarisse said, giving them a knowing smirk, "Take the prisoners below." Crap, he'd just turned 'for now' into about half a second.

'Below' was an unpleasant place to be locked up. It smelled like brine, but not the way that made you think of the beach. It was an overwhelming raw fish smell, and it made Green want to curl up in a ball around a scented candle and let it burn his nose off. The constant rocking of the boat made him a bit sick, and being in close quarters with both Annabeth _and_ a Cyclops just kept getting more and more unnerving as he waited for the inevitable carnage. Now seemed as good a time as ever to talk to her, so he tugged on her sleeve and jerked his head towards the bathroom.

"What?" She asked, looking confused. Oh, right, speaking words.

"Uh, can I talk to you for a sec?" He asked, fiddling with a trailing bandage on his sling. She nodded, and sat down in one corner, with Percy suddenly in deep conversation with Tyson.

"Er… when I was talking, uh, with Thalia…" he said, wincing as her jaw tightened, "She mentioned what happened, when you were going to camp… with the Cyclops." He closed his eyes, waiting for her to start strangling him, but she just sighed. Tentatively, he continued. "I thought that might be why you're so angry with Tyson, and… um…"

"I know," she said, looking at the floor, "It's just… that thing he did on the ship? Where he imitated Luke's voice?" Green nodded, not liking where this was going. "When the four of us ended up in the Cyclops' den, it did that same thing, to lure Luke and Thalia."

"That's… terrifying," he said, cursing himself. _Duh, Green!_ "But, Tyson isn't like that at all…"

"I know, it's just hard to forget about, you know?" He nodded, and stood up.

"I'm gonna get some sleep," he said, and hid under the covers of one bunk. He imagined Greg's response to this. _Real heroic, hiding in bed from one of your friends. Impressive._ Could sarcastic clapping be conveyed telepathically? Curling up into a ball and burying his face into his shirt, which smelled like burnt cotton but was still preferable to dead fish, he closed his eyes and let the rocking of the boat ease him into sleep. _Note to self: when having heart-to-heart with Annabeth, be behind something, preferably several inches of bullet-proof glass._

As he slept, a vague sense of déjà vu crept into his dreams, filling them with red-blue light riding endless waves of night, as he tossed and turned in his sleep.


	8. The Storm

**Oh look! I updated and it isn't even July yet! XD Thanks for all the reviews, they help me force myself to do stuff and not be a useless lump!**

**SO!**

**guest (Reviewed chapter 7 on, um… May 23.) - Aww shucks!**

**KJtheELMtree/Beth M - "OK, so it turns out that seaweed and algae are protists, not plants, BUT I just found out that when a ship or plane goes down in the Bermuda Triangle a circle of sea grass and the associated ecosystem starts forming around it, using the downed object as a substition for a coral reef. So yes, Green is still alive, but only because no one's mowing the grass." Um… oops. WELL I FEEL LIKE AN IDIOT! XD Glad you got an account, so this can be less public now. Okay, super-duper cop-out time! So, I think I'll just count anything that does photosynthesis… :3 Wait… AGH THE HADES GRASS! Ugh, nevermind. Well, ALL PLANTS, + PROTISTS THAT HAPPEN TO DO PHOTOSYNTHESIS! :/**

**Yeah, so TO THE STORY NOW TO DISTRACT ME FROM MY SHAME!**

When you had only one functioning arm, no life vest, and couldn't pass a summer camp swim test, the last thing you want to wake up to in the middle of the Atlantic is alarm bells. Of course, the universe had taken this into account and made sure that was exactly what brought Green bolt upright in bed covered in cold sweat. Some lingering feeling of unease combined with all the noise made him about ready to go into cardiac arrest as the incessant clanging warned them all of the impending apocalypse, and‒

"Green, calm down," a very groggy Percy said, putting a hand on his shoulder and making him jump nearly a foot in the air. Right, they didn't _know_ the ship was sinking. It probably was, but they weren't sure. His fear of drowning or being eaten was much worse than the possibility of Clarisse screaming at him, so he reached out and snapped off a bedpost. If anyone asked, it was a weapon, but all he really wanted was something to float with.

"Uh, we don't really know what it is, do you think you should…" Percy trailed off as Green gave him a level stare and turned toward the door. Just then, it flew open with a loud clang, revealing a confederate zombie wearing an enormous and very unsettling grin. He hid the post behind his back, hoping it wouldn't care enough to ask.

"All hands on deck," it said, "We're approaching the entrance." Wait a second… Thalia had said something about the Sea of Monsters. Wasn't the entrance guarded by something?

"Entrance to what?" Percy asked. Green smacked himself in the face, again.

"What do you _think_?" He demanded through his hand. "The Sea of Monsters." Sigh. He was a nice guy, but he could be a real moron sometimes.

"Green, I think your arm is bleeding again." Annabeth said, pointing at his bandage. Looking down, he found to his relief that the bandage was only a light pinkish color, rather than the horrible ruin of red and blood and gore he'd been expecting.

"Don't think we have time," he said, and began climbing the stairs. Some part of him was noting that there would come a time very soon when he would rage at himself for being such a moron, because his bandage would be soaked through and the giant monster would smell him, or whatever else the world decided to throw at them. Still, he wanted to see what was going on and didn't feel like wasting time on such petty things as health and hygiene.

Looking back, he called out to Percy, who was still shoving random items into his bag. "See you on deck!"

It wasn't a very nice day outside, a bit cold and foggy, and overcast… but the air above deck smelled great. It was like salt and spray, mixed with sun baked grass and the not-so-pleasant odor of rotting zombies. Unfortunately, he still had a lingering tightness in his gut, a leftover from some half-remembered fragment of a dream that made him jump at every noise and suspect every shadow. He was absolutely sure that something really bad was about to happen, which probably had something to do with the fact that some idiot had given Clarisse _cannons_, and she was now yelling at the zombie captains to ready them. Wonderful.

The ship started to pick up speed, and the sinking ache in his stomach only got worse when Tyson said, "Too much strain on the pistons." Green wasn't sure what that meant, but he figured a sinking ship would come into the explanation at some point. "Not meant for deep water," their resident mechanic continued. How the young Cyclops knew more about this steamer than Clarisse did he wasn't sure, but it might have been some kind of Cyclops instincts, or maybe it was because he was a son of Poseidon? Green glanced over at Percy, who had just appeared on deck, but the brooding look on his face wasn't one that begged for conversation.

As the ship sped forward, Green began to like the smudges on the horizon less and less. One was starting to look alarmingly like a hurricane, and the other, a massive island of sheer cliffs and most likely some flesh-eating beasts, seemed like the kind of thing that would turn out to be the anvil in a between-the-hammer-and-the-anvil type situation.

"Is that a hurricane?" Annabeth asked, sounding just as nervous as the possibility deserved.

"No," Clarisse replied, unconcerned. "It's Charybdis." That… rung a bell. A very, _very_ unpleasant bell. Something to do with a huge mouth or something.

"Are you _crazy_?" Annabeth demanded, at the same time as Green asked politely, "Do you have any life vests?" He thought it was pretty obvious that everyone on that steamer was nuts, except maybe Tyson. It wasn't his fault he had terrible role models.

"It's the only way in," Clarisse pointed out. "Right between her and Scylla." She pointed to the top of the island, and Green realized just what they were. Thalia had told him about this, or maybe it was Katie Gardner… Charybdis was a giant mouth, and Scylla had a hundred little mouths. All in all, there would be mouths everywhere, and all of them would be hungry for demigod flesh.

"But the sea is wide open," Percy said, sounding confused, "Why not just sail around them?" It was a fair point, although Green suspected it wouldn't be that easy.

"Let me guess," Green said, not quite sure but thinking he knew how this type of thing went. "If we sail around, we'll just run into them again?"

"Yeah," Clarisse said grudgingly, like she wanted to call him an idiot shrimp but he was too obnoxiously right.

"What about the clashing rocks?" Annabeth asked. This time, he felt the mythology ruffle his hair as it passed straight over his head. "Jason used those."

"I can't blow up rocks!" Clarisse said, sounding indignant. That sounded almost like their only plan was just to blow up whatever got in their way. But… Scylla had too many heads to attack, and her body was probably way up at the top of that cliff. There was no way those cannons could hit her. So, Clarisse wanted to attack Charybdis, who was currently the center of an enormous storm and, if he remembered the story right, a whirlpool of death.

"You are crazy," Annabeth said, and Green couldn't agree more.

"Watch and learn, Wise Girl," Clarisse said confidently. Was that an insult? It didn't even sound sarcastic! She was usually so good at those…

"Are you _sure_ you don't have any life vests?" He asked again, wondering if there was much point anyway but wanting to have _something_ to protect him.

"Shut up shrimp! Set course for Charybdis." Hooray, he was right! _Crap_, he was right.

"Clarisse?" Percy asked, "Charybdis sucks up the sea, right? Isn't that the story?"

"Yeah."

"What about Scylla?"  
>"She lives in a cave in those cliffs. If we get close, her heads will come down and start snatching sailors."<p>

"We could choose Scylla then. Everyone goes below decks and we sail right past.

"I'm guessing that isn't going to work," Green said. "It's like the gods want us to be as straightforward as possible."

"Yeah," Clarisse replied. "She might just pick up the whole ship. Besides, my cannons can't shoot straight up." Well, it was nice to know that their survival was at the top of her priority list, rather than glory or explosions.

As they steamed merrily ahead towards their certain deaths, a sound not unlike someone slurping soup filled the air, and wind started tugging at the red Ares flag on the prow, making it snap violently. Maybe if he wrote up his last will and testament the wind would carry it to shore, not that he had anything to will to anyone. Everyone he knew well enough to give something was either tied up in this stupid quest or a tree.

He wandered over to where Annabeth and Percy were standing at the rail, deciding to spend his last moments frantically searching for some kind of Plan B. "Do you still have that thermos of wind?" she asked. Green had totally forgotten about that. Huh.

"It's too dangerous," Percy said. "More wind might make things worse." They were dead. Utterly dead. Green was almost tempted to just toss the bedpost. There was no way he could just float around in the water, even if there wasn't a monster that wanted to eat him sucking up a few million gallons of water and pulverizing anything in it.

"What about controlling the water?" She was grasping at straws a bit now, but what were they supposed to do? He mentally listed all their assets in his head, but nothing seemed like it would help even a little. Wait… was Percy actually trying to stop the hurricane?! His eyes were closed and his eyebrows were scrunched up in concentration. Maybe…

"I… I can't do it," he said, slumping against the rail. Yeah, they were all screwed.

"We need a backup plan," she said, frustrated. "This isn't going to work." Well, if they were really lucky… Luke would show up in his cruise ship, having built giant wings onto the side, and then been assassinated by one of the mortals on the ship. The monsters would all have simultaneous heart attacks, and they'd get away easy. If they'd had that kind of luck, they wouldn't have been there in the first place.

"Annabeth is right," Tyson said, in that endearingly direct way of his. "Engines no good." What?! The engines were failing on top of everything else?

Then, without warning the world began to tilt the ship lurched sideways. The boat listed so far to the left that the four of them slammed into the railing, which was starting to look more like a ramp than anything else, and a huge wave crashed over them. Green felt himself being lifted up by the swell of water and tried desperately to cling to something, but all he managed to do was drop the bedpost as he was swept over the rail. Someone was screaming, but then his head was underwater and all he could hear was a loud roar that vibrated deep in his bones.

Something was wrong with his vision. There on his right was Percy, reaching out a hand… but on the left was another one. He felt like throwing up as two pairs of sea-green eyes trained on him and two Percy-shaped bodies surged forward. Left-Percy grabbed him first, which didn't make any sense. There was _one_ Percy, this was all just a concussion or something, but how did it grab him first? His vision was getting fuzzy, and the right Percy had grabbed his leg.

He'd never played tug of war before, but Green suddenly found himself playing the role of the rope and decided never to be so cruel to anything, even if it was an inanimate piece of braided nylon. His shoulder felt like it was about to come loose as it was yanked mercilessly, and the vice-like grip around his ankle sent pain shooting up his leg as fingernails dug into his skin. The water began participating too, strong currents going in both directions at once, spinning the three of them in a circle as the two sons of Poseidon fought for control over the water. Giving up, he closed his eyes and decided that since he couldn't tell which one was the real Percy and he was probably unconscious anyway, he'd just take a nap.

Green woke to the feeling of a jackhammer going off in his skull. He lay there, still exhausted and reluctant to open his eyes, just in case the hammering went away and he could sleep some more. Groggily, he realized that this was the third time in two years he'd been knocked unconscious for… how long? Alarmed, he sat bolt upright and yelped as the pain in his head doubled.

He opened his eyes and wanted to shriek. There was a _face_ looming over him, and it definitely wasn't Percy.

"Hi!" the face yelled, making his eardrums hurt too.

"Eurgh…" Green replied. Simple, eloquent, very sophisticated. The sky was a whole lot brighter than it had been when he fell off the boat. Wait… _he fell off the boat!_ Was this the other Percy that had been grabbing him? Had he just been _kidnapped?!_

"Relax! I'm not gonna eat you," said the not-Percy, who didn't look much like Percy now that Green wasn't drowning in murky water. He could have sworn they had the same green-blue eyes, but this guy's were clearly a bright Caribbean blue. His hair was blue as well, almost the same shade as his eyes actually, and he had a deep tan.

"How…" Green tried to say, but his tongue felt too big for his mouth and the word was slurred almost beyond recognition. "How long…" The person, whoever they were, seemed to understand.

"Er, it's the next day… so about twenty-four hours. I'm Huri!" the stranger said, sticking out a hand. Green shook it, feeling like throwing up again. Oh… well, when he got back the others were going to murder him and feed his corpse to Scylla. Great.

"No need to worry about those Greeks. Their ship sank. The idiots were trying to sail through Charybdis with a steamer, if you can believe it." It took him a full second to comprehend what the stranger had just said. They… sank?

"Are they…"

"Pretty sure they drowned, but it serves 'em right, kidnapping you."

"What?! They didn't, they aren't… WHAT?!" Green's voice had been escalating in volume right up to a shout, but Huri seemed completely at ease. He couldn't seem to say anything coherent either, the different objections kept trampling over each other.

"Yeah. You're safe now."

"But… they were my friends…" The weight of what happened was all sitting right on top of his chest, crushing the life out of him. They didn't drown… they couldn't have…

"What? You're… you're with the _Greeks?!_" Something in the guy's voice made Green look up from his feet, and straight into his eyes.

"Yes…" he said slowly.

"You… YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" he screamed, lifting him up by the collar and ramming him into a tree, leaning in until they were nose to nose. The sudden change in demeanor had paralyzed Green, all he could do was feel his heart beat in his toes and hope the guy didn't kill him. There was something changing about Huri's face. His eyes… it was like a storm, spikes of grey lightning arcing from the outside of his iris, turning the eye iron grey, like the Sea of Monsters in the middle of Charybdis' storm as his jaw went rigid.

"I have no idea what you're talking‒" Green tried to say, but the stranger cut him off.

"THEY'LL KNOW! YOU KILLED US ALL!" he was still shouting, his face turning beet red. Rain had begun to fall too, and waves crashed against the shore like they wanted nothing more than Green's blood. With a final scream of rage, Huri shoved him backwards into the jaws of the sea. Just like that, he was drowning again, sinking down under the weight of his clothes and bandage. Not sure what else to do, he flailed with his left arm, hoping that by some miracle there would be a raft there or something. Then, his hand hit something hard. He pulled himself towards it, and his head broke the surface.

Freezing air filled his lungs, but as he gulped it in he realized what he was holding. It was a board from the deck of Clarisse's ship; he recognized the little scuff Tyson's shoe had made on it the day before. Huri hadn't been lying, it had sunk. Tears burned his eyes, and Green suddenly wanted nothing more than to let go of his plank and sink under the waves forever, but he forced himself to cling to it even harder. Waves pushed him under over and over, but each time he kicked and fought his way back up, holding on for dear life.

Percy couldn't drown, and he'd help the others. They _were_ alive, and he was going to find them and punch Clarisse _again_ for her stupid plan. Another wave crashed over him, and again he floated to the surface. His strength was failing, but the storm was only getting worse. Lightning was flashing everywhere, and the immense waves were bigger each time they crashed over him. Suddenly, he felt his feet scrape against sand. Desperately, he fought against the current that sought to pull him away again, digging his feet into the muck and pushing himself forward with all his might. He let go of his precious board to grab a fistful of the shoreline, and in an instant it was gone.

Exhausted, he wanted nothing more than to flop down on the beach, but he knew it wasn't safe. He forced himself forward, hoping it wasn't the same island he'd been evicted from, and when his legs gave out he began to crawl. There was a cave! It was more of a crack really, a small crevice made by a large rock that jutted up from the ground like a rhino's horn, but he was in no position to complain.

As he squirmed in under the rock, he realized that it was much bigger than he'd thought. There was plenty of room for one small, scrawny kid to curl up and‒

There was someone already there. Green yelped and stared in terror at a slowly rising lump that looked an awful lot like someone he knew. Clarisse La Rue was in the cave with him.

**Yeah, I suck at cliffies! :D BUT IT'S MASSIVELY LONG SO YAY!**


	9. Smile!

**Glargh. I am reeeally tired but can't sleep, SO I WILL WRITE THINGS! Also… MY V KEY IS BROKEN! D:**

**So, besides the update, I do have some news! I AM FINALLY DONE WITH SCHOOL (well, almost), and I kinda had a panic attack at the graduation thingy… that sucked. Right, so that means that for the next couple months I'm gonna have waaaay too much time on my hands, so I am going to try to actually have an update schedule! But not just ****_any_**** update schedule, I'm going to put up a new chapter of one story every day! :D Well, I probably won't update if I'm at a picnic all day or something, but if I'm just lazing around doing nothing, I'LL DO SOMETHING WITH MYSELF AND IT WILL BE AWESOME! If anyone wants to help me by ALL CAPS RAEGING at me when I get lazy, then that's cool!**

**Another thing, I was wondering if anyone had weird story ideas they wanted to read but couldn't find! Just let me know if you feel the need for a certain type of thing, like I ****_kinda_**** wanna do a Minecraft crossover because, well, I like Minecraft! :P No guarantees, but if I like it, I'll do it! :) This A/N has gotten really long, so I'll just shut up and get to the story, shall I? :3**

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><p>"GAH!" Green shrieked as the dark shape grabbed him by the collar. Then, the hand relaxed, releasing him. He began to notice just how <em>familiar<em> the shape looked. "Clarisse?" He asked, part of him hoping he was hallucinating and that it was just a raccoon or something. There was a second of silence as Clarisse realized who she was holding and Green was cursing his bad luck. Of _all_ the people he would be stranded with…

"Shrimp," she said, as if they had met in a coffee shop rather than some gods-forsaken island in the middle of the Bermuda triangle.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, knowing the answer. She didn't speak, just pointed through the entrance to their pathetic excuse for a shelter at the table from her cabin on the ship. It really _had _sunk.

"Did you see…" he trailed off as she shook her head, her mouth set in a grim line. "But," he protested, still not ready to just give up, "Percy can't drown, right?"

"I don't know, we got caught between Charybdis and Scylla." Green could feel the pressure building in his chest again, hot rage at that _stupid_ plan and that _stupid _ship and the _useless_ zombies.

"What kind of plan was that anyway?!" he shouted, not really caring if something heard him. "Just _shoot_ the big monster? Nah, no _way _that could go wrong!" he stopped, breathing hard.

"I…" she trailed off, and he was shocked to see that there were tears in her eyes.

"Sorry," he said shakily, "It's not your fault." It kind of _was_, but there was no point rubbing it in. "Look, we need to go explore. This might be the island Grover's on, or maybe we can find a raft or something." They had to run into some luck _eventually_, right?

"Y-yeah," Clarisse said, straightening. Squirming through the crack, Green fought down his hunger and exhaustion. His right arm kept scraping against the rock, and the bandage was coming loose. He knew they should rest, that they were endangering themselves by not resting, but somehow he couldn't stand the idea of napping in a cave while Annabeth and Tyson drowned, or Percy or Grover got eaten, or Thalia slowly died.

Together, Green and Clarisse hiked through thick woods; the island was much bigger than he had thought. Startled deer sprinted off at the sound of the odd pair crashing their way through the undergrowth, too weary to be graceful. Babbling brooks soaked through their shoes, soft moss sent them sliding down onto their backs, and beautiful wild roses choked the path and pricked any exposed skin, giggling at him as they sliced open his skin.

It was Green who spotted the opening, a gaping black hole about five feet high, with twin pillars of stone set into the sides. He would have run away, but something made him pause. Light spilled in through the entrance, revealing a rough stone floor and something else… something black and shiny. Hair? Green stepped closer, poking Clarisse in the shoulder. Slowly, they made their way up to the hole, past the pillars. They were carved, he realized, with hundreds of spidery symbols that he couldn't make any sense of.

As the distance closed, Green rushed the last few paces towards the hair, which he realized belonged to an unconscious woman. Her right leg was bent at a strange angle, definitely broken, and her arm… It ended at the elbow, spilling blood onto the cold stone beneath her. Trying not to gag on the smell, he groped at her remaining wrist for a pulse. Silence.

"She's dead," he said slowly, his eyes fixed on the corpse.

"We need to find what did this," Clarisse said, her old Ares bravado beginning to assert itself.

"What about the quest?" he asked halfheartedly.

"We can't just leave this alone! What if it kills more people?"

"Okay, but I don't see any other passages. Maybe it's out hunting." As he said it, Green realized that sleeping here would have been a horrible mistake.

"What are you waiting for then?" Clarisse asked, marching past the corpse's outstretched legs towards the exit. Standing up, he followed her to the bright light of outside. His eyes had adapted to the dark inside the cave, and all he could see was whiteness. Naturally, it all went wrong.

Like a switch being flipped, total darkness suddenly swallowed up the light of day, and for one horrified second he thought the entrance had closed. Then, he realized that the real cause was worse. What they had thought was an exit was really a tunnel, he could smell dank air wafting from it. In all the excitement, neither of them had noticed that the girl's body was now facing away from the "exit."

"Crap," he whispered, backing away. Dread had begun to claw at his stomach, an animal sense that he needed to be away, to leave now, get out get out get _out!_

Clarisse said something a lot worse, then some more choice words in Greek as the pair of them backed away. He knew he should turn around and look for the door, but something in his gut wouldn't let him turn his back on that dark tunnel for an instant. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and trickled down his spine as he sensed something moving toward them, something he wanted to be far away from _right now_.

Two points emerged from the gloom, glowing bright white in the deep darkness of the doorway from which daylight had been pouring a second ago. They crept nearer and nearer, two orbs that glowed like little flashlights. Suddenly, they expanded to the size of tennis balls as the creature they belonged to pounced, revealing itself in the light of those eerie searchlights. It looked almost like a baby, a baby that hadn't eaten in weeks. A swollen belly jutted below protruding ribs, the milky white skin stretched so tight over its hips and shoulders that Green could see just how they connected. Its flesh was so pale that he could see each vein, spider webs of blue draped over a massive head, as large as the rest of its entire body. Two spindly legs and a pair of arms were braced against the entrance to its lair, limbs so thin they should have snapped against the weight of its little body. The most disturbing thing was its mouth. A wide frog smile stretched all the way across its face, from one pointed ear to the other, so wide it looked like it could swallow him whole.

Someone screamed, and to Green's eternal shame, it wasn't Clarisse. Then, he was on the ground, with the _thing_ sitting on top of him, smiling like a child on Christmas. It had moved faster than thought, and now it was crushing his chest with its surprisingly heavy body, arms reaching toward his face. Three fingers hung bonelessly from each hand, like sacks of blood and fat. The skin on them was lumpy too, curdled milk that was moving towards his face and he did_ not_ want that touching him! He screamed again, three short whistle bursts as Clarisse drew her sword. Its fingers touched his forehead, and he went limp.

Somewhere in his head he was still screaming, but he couldn't seem to make his lungs move. It was like being dumb again, a scream of terror stuck in his throat as a vacuum cleaner was attached to his head. All his energy seemed to be leaving him, like hanging upside down and having all the blood go to his head.

His ears were ringing, but he heard a soft sliding sound and looked down. It had a long triangle of metal sticking out of its chest… Clarisse's sword! She grabbed its bony shoulder and hauled the dead creature off him, grabbing his hand to help him up.

"It didn't‒" Clarisse said, and then the sound trailed off into a strangled gasp. _It was still alive!_ Shrieking at the top of his lungs, Green brought his foot down on one gross hand that had wound around her ankle, crushing it. There was a squishing sound, and he fought the urge to retch as something yellow and foul-smelling leaked out from under his shoe.

"Ah, ew ew _ew_!" he yelped, hoping even as he opened his mouth that it wouldn't be the last thing he said. It cocked its head at him, still _smiling_, and it knew they couldn't do anything and it thought they were funny and he was going to go insane if he spent another second in that cave!

It reached toward him, still smiling that evil little smile, and he was frozen in place, terror seeping into his limbs and dulling his senses.

Clarisse, it seemed, was less stunned. She picked up the blade on the ground, monster goo and all, and swung at it. There was a thud, and the distended head went rolling across the floor of the cave.

Green was sure it was going to grab him again, but as seconds turned to minutes he started to relax, and his new favorite daughter of Ares stepped forward and began to hack the milky flesh to bits. Its eyes were still glowing, and it was _still flipping smiling_, so he started kicking viciously at its head. On the third slam, the skull caved in and he was barefoot and ankle deep in brain matter. There wasn't much he could do about that, except what any normal person would do. He stumbled backwards, bent over and threw up. Then, as it was _STILL_ grinning at him, he kicked at its head again.

"STOP SMILING!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs, and sent the creepy head sailing right through the wall.

"Uh…" Clarisse said, as they were plunged into total darkness.

"The exit!" he said, his voice low. If there was anything else in the cave, he had already made enough noise to wake the dead, but the idea of that _thing_ having a sibling was starting to make him want to throw up again and if there was any chance of not waking up uncle Freddy, he was going to shut up. They both split up and began feeling the walls, Green shuddering at the slimy texture.

A flare of hope started in his chest as he felt empty air, and he rushed forward into… more darkness. Panic welled in his chest as he realized that this was the empty passage _it_ had come out of, and he turned around and sprinted the other way. He knocked into Clarisse just as she had found the wall that wasn't really a wall, and they both went sprawling onto the grass outside.

"GAH!" He yelled, as he stared directly into those bulging white eyes. It. Was. STILL. _SMILING!_

Roaring like a bear, he seized the nearest fallen branch and began pounding on that _disgusting_ face until there was nothing but a ruin of pale flesh and bone, and blood, and more brains.

"Green…" Clarisse said, probably worried about his sanity for some reason, but he was done. He crawled as far away as he could get, threw up in the rosebushes (served them right), and collapsed up under a pine tree.

_Did you just go in that cave?_ It asked, sounding concerned. _You should really steer clear…_

_NO! _Green said sarcastically. He heard footsteps, and looked up to see Clarisse walk up to him, lean against another tree, and slide down its length, fast asleep.

Curling into a ball, Green decided that he had earned some self-pity, and cried himself to sleep. He made a mental note to never again enter any kind of building or structure, or cave or forest, without asking the local plant life if there was _Satan_ in there.

"Crap," he muttered again, and passed out.

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><p><strong>Well, that was fun to write! O,..,O<strong>

**I actually drew this in school, and at least three people thought it was cute. :/ Clearly I need to practice drawing creepy things.**


	10. Another Ship

**Okay, so this is a tad late, but I ****_do _****actually have an excuse this time (Yay!). It's a combination actually, of internet issues (I ****_literally_**** waited half an hour for youtube to load. I clearly have NO LIFE WHATSOEVER.), being a bit busy, and being sick. It isn't throwing up everywhere about to die sick, but I spent about half of my waking day today coughing. MY ROOM IS A BIOHAZARD! As if that isn't annoying enough, it's making me super drowsy and I don't really want to do anything, including basic needs like getting up and finding something to drink. So that's fun! :D :D :D**

**So, does anyone have weird writing ideas? I dunno what to do now, I NEED MORE ODD STORIES! :D**

**Anyways, MOAR WRITING AND SUCH! *Goes into another coughing fit***

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><p>The minute he opened his eyes, Green could tell something was wrong. All the animals had gone silent, and even the trickling noise of the brook was muted, somehow distant. It was like an invisible pillow was being pressed over his ears. He looked around, spinning in a circle, eyes searching the underbrush. Something out there was looking at him, stalking him, he was <em>sure <em>of it, but there was nothing living anywhere nearby. Clarisse had disappeared from the spot where she had fallen asleep, he realized, and he tried to call out. No sound emerged from his mouth. Was he going deaf?

Suddenly, an inexorable force began to tug on him, forcing his face upward, through the canopy. Dappled light shone on his face, warm and comforting like the sun under Thalia's tree. He looked westward, towards where the sun lazed about just above the horizon. A storm was brewing there, massive clouds stacking themselves into a hurricane. _Charybdis_, he thought, but that wasn't possible. She was out in the open ocean, far away, but there was her storm!

As he watched, a long snake-like arm detached itself from the mass of inky cloud, forming a gigantic fist. It opened itself like a flower, reaching upward towards the sun. Green sprinted forward, trying in vain to reach the horizon and save the daylight from destruction, but his legs were snagged by the thorns of the rosebushes. They dug into his skin, holding him in place as the cosmic hand grabbed the sun and crushed it.

Night fell, the moon rising as if to rush to her brother's aid and swelling to fill half the sky. The hand of the storm swept along the horizon, clenching into a fist. He struggled against his thorny prison, wanting nothing more than to help, but the stems would not give way. Blood welled in all the cuts on his arms and legs, trickling down his skin.

Then, the fist of the night smashed into the moon and it shattered. Thousands of bright shards spread across the night sky, fading as they went, shooting stars losing their light. All but two. The brightest of the stars froze in the sky, growing and growing as his heart sank into the pit of his stomach.

Once again, two points of light grew into eyes, bulging lamp-like eyes in a hideous face he had smashed only hours before. Now, there was no escape. His limbs were held fast and Clarisse was gone, and it descended from the treetops like a spider from its web. It stopped inches from his face, the same wide smile close enough to kiss his forehead, like an affectionate parent. The mouth opened, wider and wider, enough to swallow him whole and bristling with needle sharp teeth. It paused, leaning it's head to one side, closed its mouth, as if thinking.

"AHH!" It shouted, snapping its teeth closed inches from his face. Huh?

He forgot his confusion as it reached for him, those fleshy fingers drawing ever nearer to his face, and this time it wouldn't ever let go… Well, if he was going to die, maybe he could burst its eardrums.

"AARGH!" He screamed, sitting bolt upright and cracking his head against a surprised Clarisse.

"What was that for?" she demanded, sitting up and rubbing her bruised forehead. He didn't answer, because he was too busy laughing with relief that it was only a dream. A really, really bad dream that he was probably going to have again. One of the teachers at Percy's school had mentioned that dreams were a way for the brain to deal with stress, and that _monstrosity_ was going to take a long time to purge from his memory.

"What's wrong with you now?" she asked, irritated.

"Oh, nothing. So, are we going to leave now?" Green inquired brightly. She scowled, not appreciating his newfound optimism.

"Look," she told him, her voice calm. The use of calm tones by an Ares camper was enough to snap him out of his temporary giddiness. Why would anything ever be going _well_ on a quest? Something must be really wrong again.

Something was really wrong again. Clarisse yanked up the bottoms of her jeans, revealing a blotch of skin on her ankle that had seen better days. It was wrinkled, covered in liver spots, stretchy and hanging off the bone.

"Ew," he commented, not knowing what else to say.

"It's where that _thing_ grabbed me," she said.

"Oh…" he said, touching the spot on his forehead the _thing_ had put its nasty little hands on. "_Oh_."

"What?" she asked, not liking being out of the loop, even if the loop only contained one person and was too small to be an actual loop.

"It got me too, remember?" he said, touching his head again to make sure that it was still as smooth as always. Nope, no wrinkles.

"Weird. Maybe it only works on demigods."

"Or it only works on children of Ares," he pointed out. "Or girls, or people without green eyes…"

"I get it," she said, scowling.

"Hopefully it'll go away," he said, trying to sound reassuring. Clarisse said something in Greek that probably wasn't very kid-friendly.

"We need to get out of here," she said, and as he couldn't have agreed more he followed her into the brush.

"Okay, I'm all for getting as far away as possible, but how exactly do we get off this island?" he asked, as they forded yet another icy stream.

"No idea."

"Shouldn't we be coming up with some kind of plan?"

"Shut up shrimp." He knew he should _probably_ be arguing with her. After all, faulty planning was what had gotten them in this mess in the first place, but he was still tired and sore. They could think of something after they'd explored the island some more. How embarrassing would it be to come up with and implement an amazing and complicated plan, only to find that there had been a huge ship just sitting on the beach? Ha, as if they'd be that lucky.

After that, they went on in silence for at least a mile, mosquitoes and flies tormenting them all the way. Green gave the roses a wide berth, still not entirely recovered from his nightmare, and Clarisse kept stopping to check her ankle. Each time she would mutter a curse, and he would _want_ to offer encouragement, but never knew what to say. Desperate to break the silence, Green wondered aloud, "Wouldn't it be just our luck for a sea monster to be guarding the‒" He was stopped suddenly, both by the realization that he was jinxing _everything_ and the fact that they had just burst through some dense foliage onto a sandy beach. This wouldn't normally be too much cause for stopping midsentence, but there was a _boat_ just sitting in the water, an actual adventure boat, not some modernized steamer! It looked like it was in really good shape, considering it was abandoned on some island in the middle of nowhere, with a massive square purple sail.

"Well," he managed, after a moment of gaping at it in disbelief. "Maybe luck on a quest does exist!" Or maybe they'd finally piled up enough Karma from their bad luck that something good had happened. If that was the case, one boat actually didn't quite compensate for all the horror and screaming and near death, but he wasn't about to complain.

"What're you waiting for, shrimp?" Clarisse asked, already halfway up the beach. Normally the prospect of getting himself from the beach to a boat in the water, rather far into the water actually, wouldn't have appealed to Green. Their luck seemed to have taken this into account and provided a small rowboat, complete with two sets of oars. It was _exactly_ enough room for the two of them, painted bright purple. One side appeared to have scraped against something, ruining the bright purple paint job. He could just make out a lowercase letter "a" and some black dots.

"This is _way_ too convenient," he said, but beggars couldn't be choosers. He and Clarisse ‒ mostly Clarisse ‒ hauled the little boat out into the waves and started rowing towards the bigger ship.

Not five minutes had passed before they were halfway to the ship, and Green's arms were halfway to falling off. Rowing was just another activity to add to the list of things he was _comically_ bad at, along with sword fighting and archery and just about every other useful adventure skill, but Clarisse was built like an ox. She just about singlehandedly reached the _Song Runner_, which wasn't the most intimidating name in the world, and then grabbed a ladder that hung down from the deck.

"There's a ladder too," Green said glumly. "Trap, calling it now."

"Shut up," she said, more out of habit than anything else.

There was a coughing noise, and both of them instantly froze. Green waited, hardly even breathing, for another sound; a creak, a footstep, anything.

There was a door set into the back of the ship, a door that he assumed led to some kind of cabin, and Clarisse was slowly edging towards it, sword drawn. Another cough, this time definitely coming from behind that door. Green raised his fists, wishing grimly that he had something impressive and pointy to defend himself with, or even a shield of some kind.

Suddenly, in one motion, the daughter of Ares lunged forward, kicking the door open with a bang and leveling her sword at the opening behind it.

There, sprawled on the floor, was an old man. Tufts of white hair clung to his shriveled bald head, his wrinkled arms so thin that Green could see the bone, a toothless mouth open beneath sunken glassy eyes.

"Water…" he croaked, looking up pleadingly.

"Who are you?" demanded Clarisse, sword still pointing at the defenseless man on the ground. He was small too, not much bigger than Percy would be if he were here. It had to be the most pitiful thing Green had ever seen, and pitiful plus convenient usually meant monster. Still, he found himself lowering his guard, wanting to help the poor defenseless man.

"Where's the water?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the guy for a second.

"Pitcher… desk," he said, his arm twitching as though he was trying to point but the effort was just too much. Green shuffled sideways, keeping his head pointed towards the center of the room. Feeling behind him, he grasped the pitcher and slowly approached, kneeling down.

The man looked at him gratefully, swallowing the slow trickle of water that Green poured into his mouth.

"Thank‒" he said, then broke into a fit of coughing, his emaciated body flopping about like a fish.

"Who are you," Clarisse asked, the edge in her voice softening as the old man continued to do nothing threatening.

"You must kill… kill the life eater," he said, ignoring the question. "Can't let it… it won't…" the effort seemed to be sapping his strength, his voice trailing off into a whisper.

"The life eater?" Green asked, wondering if there was _another_ horrible monster on the island.

"It eats you… your life," he managed.

"Yeah, we got that from the name," Clarisse said impatiently. Wait a second… this man, Clarisse's ankle, they looked oddly _similar_.

"Big head, bulgy eyes?" Green asked, hardly daring to hope. Maybe they wouldn't have to kill another beastie on the same island.

"Yes, how‒"

"We killed it, it's okay!" he said, grinning reassuringly. Although… "It didn't dissolve though," he said, his gut twisting as he said it.

"No, doesn't… it isn't… it's dead," the man said, seeming to deflate. He smiled, which would've been reassuring if he wasn't missing all his teeth. "I'm done," he said, panting. "I can go home now… go home…"

"Did it… do this to you?" asked Clarisse, kneeling down with Green, her hand going to her ankle.

"Yes," he said, sadly. "Was… fourteen, yesterday."

"_Yesterday_?!" asked Green in horror. If they'd showed up just a bit earlier…

"Got away… lucky… father helped me get here. I needed to warn…"

"Your father? Poseidon?!" he demanded, thinking of Percy. He didn't have a brother, did he?

"Need to go home. Please, the boat," the man said, twitching his legs.

"What? Where do you want to go?" Green asked, looking around. They kinda _needed_ the ship, actually…

"Rowboat… it'll take me home," he said, rolling sideways on the ground. Well, without the rowboat he and Clarisse would have to swim to shore, but this guy was so… sad looking.

"Okay," he said, grabbing the man's arm and hoisting him over his shoulder. At last, someone so incredibly light even _he_ could carry them!

"Green, are you sure?" Clarisse asked, still suspicious.

"He could've eaten us by now anyway."

She sighed and grabbed the other arm, and together they dragged the old, well, kid to the little purple rowboat.

"Thank you…" he rasped, as they lowered him into the small wooden raft. Another coughing fit sent the boat rocking, until the man went very still. His chest stopped rising and falling, and the boat began to float slowly toward the horizon. Green pretended to sneeze, covering his face and wiping away one rebellious tear. Some time later, while he and Clarisse avoided noticing each other's sadness in some kind of unspoken agreement, he broke the silence.

"That thing," Green said, "The life eater…"

"Yeah?" Clarisse asked irritably.

"Let's hope it never comes back, you know, from Tartarus," The sky rumbled, and he and Clarisse both glanced down at the same time, some animal instinct telling them to check really quick that the earth wasn't trying to swallow them up.

Together, the two of them managed to haul the anchor out of the water, after about ten minutes of swearing and tugging. It wasn't a large ship, obviously meant to be sailed by small groups of people, so they managed to get the ropes all in what they guessed were the right places. The wind was very cooperative, picking up just as they were ready and sending them skimming along the waves. It also helped that there was a potted plant on one railing that had picked up some tricks over the years, telling them that _no, _that rope did _not_ go there and that they should really avoid leaving that bit there untied if they didn't want to sink.

They had been sailing for almost an hour, painfully slowly, and the island of the life eater was almost out of sight when Green finally decided that he wasn't going to help anyone if he passed out and fell into the ocean. Stumbling a little, he made his way into the cabin of the ship, stole all the pillows and blankets off the small cot in the corner, and built himself a nest of sorts. He was warm and dry, probably safe, and about to fall asleep when he felt a tugging in his gut. It was like being in a car, blindfolded, while someone floored the engine. He couldn't _see_ it, but he knew that their little hunk of wood was picking up way more speed than he was comfortable with.

"Clarisse!" he yelled, bursting out of the tiny room to find the daughter of Ares still leaning on a railing outside, eyes scanning the horizon.

"I know!" she shouted back, over the howl of a suddenly furious wind. It grabbed anything not tied down and sent it swirling through the air, tugging at their clothes and hair, whipping the waves into a frenzy. _Huri_, he thought, but this felt _different_, somehow. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but the storm didn't feel as… angry. Percy didn't have this kind of power over the wind, he knew, but he couldn't help a small flare of hope leaping in his chest.

"Green!" Clarisse shouted over the wind, grabbing his arm and pointing. A smudge was growing on the horizon, dark against the bright blue sky.

"What is it?" he yelled back, the wind snatching at his voice.

"An island!" she replied. It was obvious, once she said it. The island began to fill the horizon, revealing palm trees and sandy beaches, and a massive jutting cliff. Sheer sides, plunging straight down into the sea, it was made of a dark rock. What was more, as they drew closer Green could see a figure standing right at the edge, leaning into the wind.

Then, there was a screeching, groaning, ear-splitting _noise_, like the boat itself was screaming in pain. A massive rock loomed out of the spray, sticking up from the water like a massive tooth, and the boat had clipped it. Green could hear the water rushing into the bottom of the boat, a horrible sucking sound that filled his ears.

They rammed into anther rock, and the ship began to sink. Water poured over the railings, waves rushing over the deck. It tugged at Green's feet, sending him sprawling onto the deck. The last thing he saw before his head smashed into the deck was the lone figure on the cliff leaping out into open air.

He mumbled something, trying to protest, but his head hurt too much to think anymore. Slowly, reluctantly, he sank into unconsciousness.

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><p><strong>So, that was really long! :D Does that make up for its lateness? Pwease? :(<strong>

**Do remember to review as well, I read and respond to all of them! (Not that that's ****_hard_****, I don't have too many. D: SO SADD!)**

**But yeah! :P**

**Also, I foreshadowed/referenced something! Anybody know what it is? :)**

**Pfft, of ****_course _****that wasn't an evil plot to get more reviews, what do you take me for? (If you answered desperate, you win!)**


	11. Answers

**I'm, uh, back… and late. Again. *Sigh.***

**I swear, I'm not just lazing about! Well, not ****_all_**** the time! :P  
>I've just been working on another story, and this chapter wasn't the easiest to write. :**

**Disclaimer: All rights to Rick Riordan and stuff! If you can't tell the difference between his writing and mine, raise your hand! *Cricket noises***

* * *

><p><em>I wonder,<em> Green thought absently, as he lay flat on his back with his head aching yet again, _How many times have I been knocked out this week?_ Not to mention how many boats had met their unfortunate ends, evil monsters that had tried to kill them ‒ well, that last was to be expected. Still, he should really find a mortal doctor when this was all over and find out just how many concussions a human being could take before they turned into a vegetable.

Well, there was no time like the present for discovering what evil man-eating monster has you in its clutches, so Green opened his eyes. What kind of hell fiend would be looming over him today?

There was a girl staring at him. A girl that blended perfectly with the background, leaving only vague outlines of her body and eyes. Invisible girls,_ just_ what he needed.

"You're awake," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Uh…" he said, trying not to sound like a drunken goon and probably not succeeding.

"You can _talk_?!" she asked, as if he was her favorite cat or something.

"Yeah, for…" he paused a moment. How long had it been? He had _no_ idea how many days. Two concussions, two faints, and a sleep, right? Wait, no, two concussions_, three_ faints, and a sleep. Did drowning count as a faint or a concussion? "…six losses of consciousness."

She was giving him a strange look, but she had some pretty good reason. Not that she should talk, or rather look, as she _had_ jumped off a cliff earlier. Was that the same person? Did he make that up?

"You shouldn't be able to talk. That's the _whole point,_ you can't talk until we train you."

Well, this was just getting more and more cryptic. How he loved confusing conversations first thing in the morning.

"Uh, excuse me, _what?!_" he demanded, hoping she might actually make some sense if she said it again.

"That's just the way it is. We don't talk at first, we physically can't! If you don't talk, you don't make allies. They distract you," she explained. Well, she was _talking,_ but the word "explain" was pretty generous.

"Right, let's start slowly… no, let's get to the million dollar question actually. Why am I not supposed to have allies? Who are you?! What do you mean by training?" Technically, that was three questions, but who was counting?

"You're biased. Your domain is all that should matter. Oh, and I'm Abby, I'm supposed to teach you about your powers."

_POWERS?! _It was about darn time! Percy got his epic water skills and sword fighting, Annabeth had her battle strategy and dagger, Tyson was basically the hulk, even _Grover_ could magic some lousy vines into existence! All he got was as much balance as a drunken toddler on a pogo stick, spaghetti arms, the strength of a diseased _weasel_…

"Powers?" he asked, trying not to sound greedy. One crazy skill, was that too much to ask?! Some flight, invisibility, maybe _one_ weapon he could use competently (that wasn't basically a stick)?

"Oh, those won't come until later. I think I've gotten you confused… let's start with your name." Drat. Well, they'd better be some _awesome_ abilities.

"I'm Green," he said, rather anticlimactically. Green wasn't a very impressive name to begin with, and he'd just kind of said it. Dramatic flair was another thing he simply couldn't quite grasp.

"Green. That isn't very clever. Well, my full name is Abigail. Get it? Abi_gale_?"

"Er, no actually."

"Right, you have no idea what's going on!" That, sadly, was quite an understatement. Absolutely nothing even remotely resembling any clue at all came a bit closer to the mark.

"I'm a blank slate," he said flatly.

"Well, to start with… um, I've never really done this before. We're, uh, elementals, sort of." Okay... that rung a bell, that one bell in the cathedral that was cracked or something, so it made a really discordant, annoying noise that did nothing at all except confuse everyone.

"What?"

"Okay, I'll just tell you the myth!" she said, smiling brightly and making him shiver slightly. He was hanging around demigods too much; with Annabeth and Clarisse, bright smiles were usually a bad sign. "So, way back when Gaea came from Chaos, he was a bit overprotective. 'Course, he was an all-powerful deity, so instead of just worrying like a normal person, he created the first elemental, the protector of earth to guard his daughter."

There was an awkward silence as Green tried to grasp what she was saying.

"Anyways," she continued, ignoring the funny look of utter confusion that he was probably making. "Gaea was lonely, yadda yadda, Ouranos!" That was much more… oversimplified than he was used to, but he liked how to the point it was. "The second elemental was created, protector of air. That's me, uh, kinda. I protect the wind and sky."

"You aged well," he said, trying very hard not to start spluttering and making incoherent noises. Wait, was _he_ that old?!

"No, wait… uh, well, that was the _original_ air elemental. She, wait… he, yeah, he the first time‒"

"What?!" he asked, his voice rising another octave. That was often a symptom of complete mental overload, something he'd been experiencing far too much lately.

"Yeah, when he died, he was reincarnated, and so on and so forth. I'm the…" she paused, thinking. "...I have no idea. Something in the millions. There've been a _lot_ of incarnations before I came along. Right, so after _that,_ there was all kinds of procreation‒" she ignored the odd noises Green started making again. "‒and eventually more elementals were made, one for each, uh, element. Fire, water, earth, air, and you. And, er, there's another one, but we don't talk about her."

"Okaaay…" Green said, trying to process everything she'd just said. "I'm the… what elemental?"

"Plants, _duh!_" she said. Green thought she rose an eyebrow, but it was hard to tell what with her being see-through and all. "I just met you today, and even I knew that!"

"The other one, you said you didn't talk about…" he trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

"We don't talk about her," she said, looking at him oddly, like it was somehow rude for him to ask. When he didn't respond, she said, "She's the incarnation of, well, darkness. She's evil." Ah, that explained it. Not really, but he was too busy with all the other questions crowding around in his head to stick to one topic.

"So, do we all have themed names? Abi_gale_, Green…"

"Huri's name is the first half of Hurricane," she said, "and the fire guy goes by Chris, as in Crispy."

"Nice to know I'm part of a long line of god-awful punners," he said with a sigh.

"That's nothing. The air guy before me called himself Gus, as in Gust." Green had to force himself not to cringe.

"So," he said, once he'd recovered somewhat, "If you had a past reincarnation… incarnation? Carnation? Anyway, what was mine like?"

Abby froze, staring at him.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked, after a long and awkward pause.

"I'm just curious," he said, wondering why he felt so defensive all of a sudden.

"Oh…" She was silent for at least a minute after that, looking down at her feet. "Well… she was kind. She'd never hurt a soul, unless you messed with her friends. It was a bit of a berserk button of hers."

That sounded a lot like Percy, actually.

"What was her name?" he asked, filled with a sudden urge to _know_ about this woman that had come before him. It was like finding a diary that belonged to a mother long dead and forgotten. Before, he'd never noticed how much he needed to remember her, but now…

"Jasmine." He laughed a little at that.

"Like the plant? Sorry, but that's way better than all those puns and _oh my gods are you crying?!_"

"No," she protested, turning her head away from him. He hadn't noticed because she was so translucent, but her eyes looked sort of sparkly.

Green hesitated between patting her on the back and putting a hand on her shoulder. What was he supposed to do?! Would she be mad that he was touching her? _Could _he even touch her? She was see-through, what if his hand went right through her?

"I'm sorry! I didn't… don't cry!"

"It's okay…" she said, wiping her eyes angrily.

"Well, she's in Elysium now, right?" he said, trying to smile reassuringly.

"No," she said, flatly.

_YOU COMPLETE IDIOT! _Green thought at himself. Gingerly, he rested a hand on her shoulder. She was reassuringly solid, warm and alive-feeling.

"Uh, well, uh…" He really _sucked_ at this. She drew in a shuddering breath, let it out.

"I-I'm okay now," she said, after a minute. "It's just… we don't get an afterlife. We just… stop."

"I'm really sorry, I didn't know," he said softly, cursing himself for being so incredibly insensitive. "She sounds great."

Abby smiled weakly, "You're a lot like her, you know."

Green grinned, "I ought to be! She's kinda like my mom, right?" Abby blinked, and for a horrified second he thought she might cry again.

"Yeah," she said simply. _Time to change the subject_, he thought.

"When you say powers… what exactly does that mean?"

"Well," she stopped, collecting herself. "Jasmine could grow plants, make them move… stuff like that."

"Cool!" he said eagerly, hoping that his enthusiasm might cheer her up.

"Of course, it takes years before we can_ use_ them, like, on purpose."

…

Crap. The universe was just _messing_ with him at this point. Oh look, it turns out you're an entirely different species with epic powers! 'Course, those epic powers are basically the same as your average Satyr and aren't even reliable. HA!

"Great," he muttered, hanging his head. "Just _splendid_." That got a laugh out of Abby at least. "Oh yeah, is it true that if I go too far away from plants for long enough, I die? A pine tree told me." She blinked. Twice.

"Yeah, it is. We're all like that. For me, it's going underground."

"But… there's air underground. That doesn't make any sense!" Green could practically hear the universe laughing at him. _Sense? What is this sense you speak of?!_

"Well, I'm more a _wind_ elemental than air. No wind underground, or inside buildings."

Green stopped to process that sentence. "You can't go inside? Ever?"

"Not unless you leave the windows open," she replied, smirking. The look on his face must've been pretty funny.

"Okay. Hey, uh, am I supposed to develop super strength, by any chance?" Green really, _really_ wanted some cool powers.

"No, no, definitely not. Actually, you're probably less strong than the average person, at least at first." He wanted to be offended, _so _badly… but the truth was the truth.

"Any particular reason? Is there some kind of cool tradeoff?"

"Nope. It's because you're basically a newborn baby," Abby replied, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"No! I've been alive for… uh…" He didn't really know. "At _least_ a year."

"And one-year-olds have such _excellent_ fencing skills!"

"But… but I'm older than I remember! I had this weird dream, and I don't remember it, but it, like, erased my memory!" Yes, he was babbling… but it was _so_ unfair that he was completely useless in every single aspect of combat. Except the insane plans part.

"Oh… I think that was your creation."

"The weird dream?!" He wasn't even two. _He wasn't even two!_

"Yeah. That was Chaos. We're not born, we're made, so we can sometimes remember, uh, coming into being."

Wait…

_Wait!_

The oak tree! _"Those like to you in spirit have never been born._" Oh, ha ha! Stupid mysterious oaks with their cryptic bull‒

"Look, we can talk later, but we should really head to the beach. Luke's on his way with his ship, and‒"

"WHAT?!" Green shrieked at the top of his lungs. Perhaps a more subtle approach would've had more success, but there was a limit to how many game-changing shocks he could take in one conversation.

"Oh. You made friends on the other side right? That's what I was trying to say, about your domain being the important thing."

"He poisoned my friend! My friend _the tree!_" Green protested.

"One tree. Trees, air currents, puddles of water, bits of soil… millions of them are killed every day, cut down or poisoned, and Kronos would get rid of all that." Green froze. His insides froze. He'd never thought about that, actually. So… air and water were sentient. Earth and fire were sentient. Even_ DARKNESS _was apparently living and thinking, just like him. Great, just great.

_No way,_ part of him said. _Luke is EVIL. He tried to kill your friends more times than you have fingers!_

That was true… but Luke could probably wipe out every demigod on the face of the earth, and it _still_ wouldn't add up to a single square mile of jungle.

_This feels _wrong!

He thought hard, looking for what it was that made this feel so incredibly immoral. It wasn't that hard to locate actually.

"I can't just help with mass murder! That's wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to _start_!"

"I'm all ears, if you have a better idea," Abby said, looking at him angrily. Well, he suspected that was how she was looking at him, but on her translucent face it was hard to tell.

He couldn't just tell people. No one would take some kid's word for it that all the plants in the world were sentient! Even the tree nymphs at camp didn't seem bothered by all the deceased plant matter they served at dinner every day.

_Wait a second!_ The food at camp wasn't grown there or imported, was it? It was just _there_, by magic! If they could magically create the food, maybe he could eat it! (He really missed meat.)

Still, he was getting off-topic. What would help the plants of the world more than the death of all the humans? Hmm, his plan should also save the air, earth, and water.

_Magically transport all the humans onto the moon?_ A very naïve part of his brain suggested. Nope, rubbish.

"Stumped, are we?" she asked, giving him a sympathetic look. "Look, I don't like the guy much either, but… there isn't much else we can do."

"Look," Green said, desperate. "Even if what you're saying is true… that still isn't right! We can figure something out that saves everyone!"

"That only works in movies kid," she said, smiling sadly.

"What about the humans?" he demanded, feeling a familiar tightness in his gut. "They get the short straw, no supernatural protector, so now they're just _expendable_?!" He spat the last word like a curse, standing up and raising his fists.

"Look, I don't want to fight you‒" she began, stepping backwards.

"Sorry, I don't make friends with Luke's _minions!_" he shouted, charging her.

She didn't even blink, just hopped sideways. "I'm no one's minion!"

"No!" he retorted, clenching his fists so hard he felt his fingernails break skin, "That's why you _aren't_ kidnapping me and bringing me aboard his ship!"

"I'm not going to force you," she said softly, "If you want to leave, go."

"And when you come back later with your new boss and start disemboweling my friends?!"

"I'm not going to hurt you, I just‒"

"Want to wipe out the entire human race. Okay, why would I have a problem with _that?!_"

"It isn't that simple!"

"You said I was like her!" he yelled, "Would _she_ have been okay with killing all those people just to get what she wanted?!"

_Oh CRAP!_ He thought, realizing what he'd just said. That was _so_ below the belt, it was down in Hades!

The look on her face was probably going to show up in his nightmares, even if she was too transparent for him to see it all that well. Her mouth was hanging open, as if she'd lost the will to keep it closed, eyes huge and glassy.

"I…" she whimpered, her gaze dropping to the ground.

Some part of him that wasn't in too much of a complete panic to be sarcastic spoke up in acid tones. _Nice going, PERCY!_

"Wait, forget it, um, I'll just… I didn't mean that!" he babbled desperately, caught between backing away and patting her on the shoulder again.

"No," she whispered. "You're right."

"I'm not! I'm an idiot, and I shouldn't have said that," he protested. Had they just switched sides? Was he trying to get her to commit genocide now?! Stupid complicated argument…

"She wouldn't like it," Abby mumbled, still studying the ground. "But that doesn't mean it's okay to just do nothing."

"We'll figure out another way, okay? Something we can both agree is right."

"Like what?! How could we possibly get it to stop?" she shouted, glaring at him.

"I don't know, but that doesn't mean it's impossible!"

"I still can't help them. I mean, it just…" she trailed off, flopping down into a sitting position.

"So don't help them! We'll make a deal. Both of us search for ways to fix it that don't involve killing billions of people, and you'll only help me do that. After all, doesn't it make sense, if both sides are wrong, to just stay out of it?"

"I guess…" Abby said, reluctantly. "We don't usually take sides in things like this… human conflicts. I just got so caught up in… everything."

"By which you mean Luke?"

"It's not like _that!_" Abby protested indignantly. "I'm‒ uh, not, um… it's not like that!"

"Sure," Green said drily.

"Hey! Just because I happen to have two X chromosomes, doesn't mean I'm a complete idiot whenever some guy with a scar comes along!"

"No one can blame you, really. He's got lots of charisma."

"_It's not like that!" _she said again, throwing a leaf at him. A wind that Green highly doubted was innocent picked it up and slapped it across his face.

"Okay, okay!" Green relented, holding his hands up in surrender. Stupid wind powers. That was cheating!

It wasn't like he was jealous or anything. Nope.

"Right, so now we aren't trying to kill each other…" he said cheerily.

_Nice Segway_, he thought to himself. _Very smooth._

"I wasn't trying to‒"

"Sorry," he said quickly, not wanting to start another argument. "But have you seen Clarisse? She came on the boat with me, but I haven't seen her around.

"Oh."

"Is that a "She's over there" oh, or an "Oops, left her on the boat" oh?" he asked, alarmed.

"Over there," Abby replied, pointing off the rocky outcropping they were seated on toward a large swath of forest.

"You just left her in the woods?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yeah."

"Uh, okay. Can we, er, go?" It wasn't usually this easy to just pick up and leave.

"I guess," she replied, shrugging. "But… your boat…"

"Smashed into little tiny pieces," Green finished. "I noticed."

"Sorry about that."

He stood up, stretching and yawning. Being knocked unconscious really made him tired, for some reason.

"You could probably use a raft or something," Abby said, after a minute. "I could call in a wind.

"Thanks!" he beamed, glad to _finally_ get something resolved without any violence.

A ship horn sounded.

Green sighed. He knew without looking whose boat it was, but spared a glance to confirm that it was indeed the Princess Andromeda, Luke's floating fortress of evil. It was moving fast, way faster than a cruise ship ought to be, and in seconds the boat was docked about a hundred yards away.

"Oops," Abby winced. "Uh, run?"

"Nah," Green replied, casually. "I've been meaning to stab him with something pointy."

"Ahoy there!" shouted a blonde someone that was almost definitely Luke.

"No, seriously, run! Get out of here!" she whispered, poking him in the side.

"Ouch. How? Do you have a sailboat out there somewhere you forgot to mention?"

"Abby!" Luke grinned, strolling casually up the rocky cliff-face. He had new goons too, a pair of women with snakes for legs. Green didn't bat an eye; it wasn't nearly as scary as someone with vipers for hair. "Nice to see you."

"Not really," she said, stepping between him and Green. "Cool minions you got there, but how do they _run?_"

_What?_ Green thought, confused.

"Don't tell me," Luke rolled his eyes, "The deal's off?"

"Yeah. I guess I don't like how you _RUN_ you're operations."

"What?" asked Luke and Green, at the same time.

"You're _hopeless_, you know that?!" she yelled, shoving him away. "RUN! GO!"

"I'm afraid I'm not going to allow that," Luke drawled, one of his snake-cronies casually pointing a crossbow at Green's face. "You are _quite_ a pain, for someone so pathetically inept. And you talk now?

"Yeah. It's been great! Now I can tell you just how much I wish the earth would swallow you up and deposit your corpse in Tartarus," Green said. _Yes, such an intelligent insult!_ cried the part of him that was starting to sound disturbingly like Greg in mock adoration.

"Shut up." That'd be his special skill from now on. Being annoying.

"Look," Abby interrupted. "I've decided that I can't help you kill so many people. I'm also _not_ letting you hurt my… brother?" The last word came out as almost a question._ Thou shalt not think too much about the godly family tree_ was pretty much number one on the list of "Things a demigod shouldn't do if he/she wants to retain his/her sanity," so he wasn't going to think too much about how _exactly_ he was related to Abby.

Probably the two billionth cousin two-hundred times removed, if Jasmine was his mom. Ugh, now he'd thought about it.

"What," Luke asked, his tone patronizing. "Again? This is the _third time_." Abby flushed, eyes dropping to the sand.

"This is _final_," she insisted, but her voice was a bit quieter now.

Luke flashed a million-dollar smile, showing way too many teeth. "Come on, don't you want to help save the air?"

"I saw that!" she gasped, pointing at him.

"What?"

"That smile! That is _not_ why I helped you! How _stupid_ do you think I am?!"

"Suuure…" Green said, at the same Luke asked, "_Really_ now?" Okay, that had to stop _right then_, or he was going to have to see a psychiatrist.

"Shut up!"

"Come on, you know you're going to come around again soon! Why not help me now, save a little time?"

Years later, when Green felt unusually depressed, he would remember what happened next and go about the rest his day bouncing on the balls of his feet. Without warning, Abby leapt forward, aided by a sudden gust, and landed her fist right on Luke's too tanned nose. A crossbow fired, but was swept up by the wind and landed safely in the water.

"Green, run. The bow won't hit you," she said, her voice deadly calm.

He wasn't about to argue. Without a second thought, he plunged headfirst into the forest.

There was no point being all "I won't leave you!" or anything. He'd _seen_ the look on her face. It wasn't self-sacrifice, it was "Get out of my way or find yourself blown into next week."

"Come _on_, deus ex machina…" Green muttered as he crashed through the undergrowth.

Just as he hurtled what he was _sure_ would be his last rotting log before he collapsed from exhaustion, he rammed head-on into a very familiar someone, who spouted some very familiar profanity as the two of them crashed to the ground.

"Green! You useless moron! Where were you anyway?!" Clarisse demanded, helping him up.

"Um…" _I just met an invisible wind spirit girl allergic to basements who told me all about how I was created by Chaos to save the plants, not even two years ago, and I'm gonna get unpredictable, unreliable satyr powers later, just like my past reincarnation Jasmine, the only exception to the rule of awful pun names. Oh yeah, and Luke's trying to kill us! _"We don't have time. Luke's trying to kill us!"

"Fine. How do we get out of here?"

"Improvise!"

He figured there'd be a ship, or small sailboat, or even a log raft. What they got was a cliff.

"Now what?!" Clarisse demanded, looking seconds away from pushing him off for being stupid.

There was a lurch, and he was tumbling into the abyss.

For a second, he was confused. It wasn't like she'd _actually_ push him off a cliff!

Then… "AHH!" Green screamed at the top of his lungs, as the waves below got _way_ closer than he liked. But somehow, not coming up quite as fast as they should have, not that he was complaining. Suddenly, there was a voice from behind him, somehow not being snatched away by the wind.

"Thank you for flying elemental airlines! We hope you enjoy your stay, and never again stupidly back yourself up to the edge of a cliff when being chased by flirtatious psychopaths!"

Oh. Abby. He twisted his head, confirming his suspicion that Clarisse's collar was indeed clasped in his new friend's other fist. Not only that, but her mouth was forming some more profanity.

Then, they hit the water. Granted, they were going _much_ slower than they should've been, but there was really only so much wind could do to slow their fall without ripping their faces off. As it was, the shock of the water made Green lose most of his air, and he barely made it to the surface before taking a _huge_ lungful of fresh ocean breeze. Coughing, he flailed his arms outward, managing to catch something sturdy and buoyant, which turned out to be a large piece of the _Song Runner_. Wincing at the memory of the unfortunate ship, he hauled himself up and began scanning the water. Abby and Clarisse were both about ten feet away, swimming towards his little pile of planks.

"Great," Abby beamed, grabbing one side of the pathetic little raft. Reaching out, she grabbed a fair-sized wooden stick ‒ probably a spear or something, judging by the sharp, fire-hardened tip ‒ and wedged it between two of the purple planks. Then, seeing what she was trying to do, Clarisse tore off a strip of her t-shirt and helped tie on a small, shattered remnant of a plank. Green hung his own tattered excuse for a shirt on top.

"This," Abby proclaimed, eyeing their handiwork, "Is probably the least sea-worthy thing I have _ever_ seen. That said, Luke is going to find us, so get lost. Their rowboat's gone, so that'll buy you some time, but‒"

"Wait," Clarisse interjected. "Who‒"

"He'll explain later," she promised. And with that, a strong wind picked up, sending their pet embarrassment skidding along the waves at a fairly respectable pace for something constructed in less than ten minutes.

As it turned out, he and Clarisse had to take turns holding the mast together. Until Green almost fell into the ocean, nodding off while mumbling something about a mysterious destiny that came with really lousy powers.

"Okay, you're obviously not going to make any sense until I let you sleep," Clarisse rolled her eyes, giving him a look like it was somehow _his_ fault that he couldn't just run on a hundred percent adrenaline.

"Oh… Kay…" he muttered, in a slightly singsong tone, before curling up on his side of the raft and trying not to crack his head on the deck.

Sleep…

"Mmph…" he grunted, half in contentment, half because he was kinda worried about more life-eater nightmares, and _so_ out of it that he was actually considering telling Clarisse. It was probably a good thing he couldn't quite summon the energy to talk properly.


	12. Missing the Mark

**Hackep! Um.**

**~Well then~**

**K, my awkward intro aside, I do have some stuffs to say. (Readers: Ugh, now you're going to talk for four paragraphs...)**

**I'm starting up school again (D:), so I won't have as much time to update as before. Also, I'm getting _super_ distracted by other projects, so what I'm sayin' is that updates are gonna be really slow. (Readers: This is news?)**

**THAT SAID:**

* * *

><p>Cool, ocean air...<p>

Bright, warm sun...

Soft...

Yeah, no.

Green finally gave up trying to calm down, sitting up and hugging himself while hyperventilating enough to make him _really_ dizzy. Hopefully, he wouldn't fall into the water.

"What's wrong with you _now?_" asked a very impatient Clarisse.

"Um."

He'd had another nightmare about that gross _thing _and it's _stupid_ smile, which he'd totally expected but still really not enjoyed. 'Course, there was no way he was gonna come crying to _Clarisse_ for hugs and puppies over a stupid dream. She already called him shrimp, he really didn't need the nickname 'Ickle Shrimp', or something even more humiliating.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Shut up," he said, folding his arms and looking anywhere but his 'first mate'. Ha, like this piece of crap was worthy of a pile of dead kelp, let alone an actual human first mate.

"Okay. Hold this, will you?"

Green noticed that her knuckles were white, and the sun was in a shiny new place. How long had he been asleep?

Like a good little shrimp, he took the "mast" from his...

Wait, did he just think _friend?! _First completing _Luke's_ sentences, now being "friends" with Clarisse? He needed a psychiatrist. Stat._  
><em>

Anyways, he did his best to keep his shirt from blowing away in the shreiking wind, courtesy of Abby, and decided that spit and prayers were freaking iron rivets and superglue compared to this pathetic excuse for a raft.

Ha, _raft_. Cute.

"So, are you going to explain what in _Hades_ just happened, who that ghost girl was, and what you've been eating to show _that _many ribs?" Clarisse asked, looking pointedly at his bare chest.

Holy crap, he _did_ look like a skeleton.

_Note to self, spit and prayers is more than you've been eating lately._

"Uh... This isn't going to make any sense, just warning you."

"Why not? It's a simple question!" Three, technically.

"Well, I don't really get it either. Not the faintest, tiniest glimmer of a clue."

"So what were you two talking about? Sugar and spice and everything Green?!" Ew, green sugar. What?

"Well, turns out I'm... uh... sorta the representative of all things plant? I think?"

"What?"

"_Basically, _I'm some kind of protector of the plants? Descended from a long line of‒"

"Super-gardeners?" asked Clarisse.

"Shut up," he protested, more on automatic than anything else.

"The truth hurts."

Yeah, well, he wasn't even a _super_ gardener yet. Just some weird Dr. Doolittle of the plants.

"Okay, fine," he said, acknowledging that he was, in fact, basically a super-gardener. "But the point is, Abby is another protector, kinda, but she's for air or wind or whatever. Hence the, uh... wind."

"Mr. Fertilizer and the amazing see-through ghost fan. Great allies," Clarisse snorted.

"Hey, she probably could've taken Luke and his cronies on her own!" he protested. Not that he exactly _liked_ Abby... but she wasn't trying to kill him either, and it looked like they'd be working together a while._  
><em>

"Then why didn't she?"

Green stopped, caught a bit off-guard. It was a fair question though, so he said honestly, "She wouldn't. Um, she's staying neutral, not getting involved either way."

"She saved us, didn't she?"

Well Clarisse, if you want to insist on logic...

"Yeah, that was more of a favor I think. She didn't want to let a comrade in... uh... elemental... ness... die?" He winced as his tongue completely failed to make any sort of human words.

"Obviously the talking thing's new."

"Shut _up!_"_  
><em>

"Well, now that you can talk, I should let you know that _can_ doesn't always mean _should_."

"You're _impossible_."

Wait...

Didn't Percy say that to Annabeth at some point? Right, it was high time he got away from Clarisse. It was like being stuck in a cabin together for a year, you couldn't help doing stupid things like learning to tolerate each other.

In those movies, the two characters always ended up kissing...

"Agh!" he yelped, retching emptily over the side while somehow still managing to hold onto the shirt-sail. Ewww...

Nope. Nope, not in a _million_ years.

Technically, it was feasible that he might actually live that long. If you didn't take into account the fact that he had a brush with death more often than he brushed his hair. Correction: not _ever_. Not in _infinity years!__  
><em>

_You sound like a four-year-old_.

Green was about to respond when he realized he wasn't _technically_ touching any plants. Great, now he was hearing voices. Or, maybe he was just being critical of his word choice. Meh.

Clarisse was looking at him funny again, so he coughed awkwardly and sat super straight, trying not to meet her questioning stare.

'Course, it was Clarisse, so it was more of an _interrogating_ look than a questioning one.

"Um... I'm still sleep-deprived."

"Sure," she rolled her eyes, as if accepting the inevitable.

His being weird was pretty inevitable.

"So, how far to the fleece?" he asked, glancing off the way the wind was blowing.

"How should I know?"

"Well, I was asleep... so do you know how long‒"

"About six hours. You can tell by the sun," Clarisse said, pointing.

"Oh. Okay."

They sat in silence another minute, before Green finally spoke up. "Can you take the mast? My arm..." Of course, the stupid bandage was _long _gone. Still, it didn't look too bad. Well, it wasn't green or leaking pus, which he supposed was good. Actually, it wasn't even bleeding, just very, very sore, and not at all ready for heavy labor like holding together a raft.

"Sure," she replied. He would've been _so_ dead if he'd asked that without a mauled arm.

"Wait..." he murmured, half to himself. Was that...

"_What?!_" Clarisse was not winning any awards for patience.

"I think that's an _island!_"_  
><em>

"Where?" she demanded, staring off ahead. With a resigned sigh, he pointed. Behind them, and far, _far_ off to the left. Starboard? He couldn't remember what side was which. Or what the other one was. Earthboard? Sunboard? Poop deck?_  
><em>

"Wow. Your friend has horrible aim," she grumbled, taking down the shirt ‒ which was still dragging them off to the north (judging by the sun) and away from their destination.

"Give her _some _credit. I mean, she got us close enough to see it, and this is pretty far from where we left. _And_, she bought us time. I mean, there is _nothing_ we could do to make this thing go faster than Luke."

Except maybe use it as fuel for a rocket.

Yeah, no.

Clarisse grunted, and he took that to mean grudging agreement, although it probably meant she just didn't care.

"So... do we have to... you know..."

"Swim?"

"Yeah." Because he couldn't swim that well. Or that far. Or at all, with his arm like it was.

"Where's _Prissy_ when you need him?" Green would've been good with a decent boat too. Maybe that guy Huri would give them a lift. Nah, if Green wanted to be _that_ optimistic, he might as well just ask Luke for the keys to his boat._  
><em>

"Um. We could, uh, paddle?"

"That would take forever."

Yeah, it might _literally_ take forever, especially if they were going against the current. Strike two for Green, who had yet to come up with a decent idea. In his defense, he hadn't slept since...

Oh. He'd just woken up hadn't he? But he got like an hour. Or four? Five? But then there were all those concussions... maybe his brain was fried or something. Crap.

Clarisse heaved an exaggerated sigh and started tearing up his t-shirt.

"What are you doing?" he asked, slightly upset about losing his only shirt. Maybe he was a little self-conscious. He'd left attractive-skinny far, _far_ behind and was now somewhere between 'stranded on a desert island for a month' and 'bleached bones'.

"Rope," she said, not looking up. "I'll tie you to the boat, and we can kick to shore."

And he'd thought he'd felt completely useless _before_. He was _literally _dead weight at this point. _Note to self: Learn to swim. And eat lots of sweet, juicy, magically made barbecue. Mmm..._

How long ago had he eaten again? Uh, Clarisse's ship, and that was like a day ago. Wait, she'd served sandwiches and potato chips, which he couldn't eat.

_Not before,_ taunted an evil little voice in his head - not plant-related, probably due to low blood sugar. _But now... you can have all the grain you want! Salty potato chipsss... Sweeeet cake... Doriiiiitos..._

Green managed to close his mouth before he started to drool.

Had he even gotten any donuts out of that stupid monster shop? Nope. _'Course _not. Though, they'd probably have wheat anyway. Would eating a bit of bread right now be the okay? He was starving, not in the hyperbolic sense, and the grain would already be dead._  
><em>

"Hey," he said, his voice coming out just a little too cheerful, "Do you have any... uh... food?"

"Why wouldn't I have eaten it earlier, moron?"

Somehow it wasn't as offensive when Greg called him a moron.

"Okay."

Holy _crap _he hadn't eaten since camp. Adrenaline, it turned out, was _not _enough to keep him going. Was wood edible? In the _don't unless you're dying _sense?_  
><em>

"Ready," Clarisse said gruffly.

Oops. He probably should have helped with his, uh, tether. Right. Totally didn't make him feel like a disobedient puppy. Grudgingly, he took the two-foot rope-ish thing she'd... torn (he should not think the word 'cannibalized' when he was seriously considering chewing on the raft) from his shirt. Green tied it to his left hand, because his right wrist was still covered in ugly red lines. Clarisse bound the other end around the "mast". So he didn't fall off and drown, because he was just _useless _like that. Not a very good adventure for his self-esteem.

"Right. Let's hope this works," Clarisse said, rolling her eyes. "But if I see you slacking off, I _will_ swim to shore without you."

"Okay," he replied. "Maybe you should be on the right," he said, a second later.

"Why?" she asked, giving him a hostile look.

"It's gonna drift towards me," he explained.

"And why is _that?_" she said sweetly, which was an oddly disturbing tone of voice coming from Clarisse.

Whatever. Green would swallow his pride. And, hopefully, a few pounds of meat and bread. Yesss...

"Because you're stronger than me," he admitted, still squirming a little. Clarisse sneered at him, and swapped sides.

Slowly, _painfully _slowly, they started making progress. Inching towards the sandy beach far off in the distance.

They drifted left. A _lot._ In fact, every so often Clarisse would have to stop paddling, or they would've gone the full 360 degrees and ended up drifting in pathetic little circles.

"Do you even _have_ muscles?!" she demanded, after about the fifteenth time he'd had to stop and rest.  
><span>

"Hey, I got mauled by a seamonster!"

"_So?_ You're using your legs, moron!"

Green didn't have a response for that, so he decided to save his breath and concentrate on swimming.

The sun gave up on them about halfway to the beach. "Hey," Green said, once it was so dark that he couldn't even see the island anymore, except as a vague, starless void on the horizon. Or his hand in front of his face.

"_What?!"_ Clarisse demanded. Maybe it was a bit more hostile than normal, but that was probably because he'd asked for a break the last three times he'd said "Hey."

"Well, we can't really _see _anymore, so-"

"Shut up and swim."

Green didn't argue. He was _exhausted_, a combination of sleepiness (He'd only been awake for a few hours, but he definitely needed a couple _weeks _to sleep this crap off) and hunger. Unrelenting, all-consuming _hunger. _Which wasn't that bad on it's own, at least when he was fairly sure he'd get some food soon, but there were fish in the ocean. _Stupid _fish. Fish that insisted on bumping into him and once even swimming through the neck-hole of his shirt and out the hem, though there was a chance that had been seaweed. And, most importantly, edible fish._  
><em>

"You know..."

"For the last time, I _don't have food!_" Clarisse shouted, turning her head so she was screaming into his ear.

"You know" was how he asked her if she was _sure _she didn't have a granola bar she'd forgotten about.

"We're almost there," he pointed out. It was true, sort of. _Almost _was a subjective term, after all, and they were more than halfway there. Still, the water was getting cold. Not hypothermia cold, more like pool temperature. But pool temperature kind of sucked when it was windy and you'd been in the water for hours.

"Shut. Up."

"Maybe we should just shout for Poly... what's his face. He might fish us out before he eats us."

Clarisse chose to ignore him, which was probably a good thing. More bickering wasn't exactly constructive._  
><em>

Then, they got lucky. Sort of. The tide changed, which Green supposed wasn't so much fate intervening and cutting them a break _for once _as it was just a daily occurrence, but it _was _convenient. What had been a painfully slow crawl towards land became lazily floating along while the water did most of the work. It wasn't _faster,_ but they didn't have to lift a finger, which was a _great _change of pace._  
><em>

Clarisse finally agreed that they could just haul themselves up onto the raft and nap. Which was good, because it had to have been like four at that point, and Green was getting really, really tired of asking Clarisse for a break.

"Mraahh!" he half yelled, half moaned as he curled up into a little ball. It wasn't supposed to be a coherent thought, just an expression of pure, exalted _joy_ that he could finally sleep.

If only he had some food, too. Crap, now he was thinking about food.

He would, despite how much he was sure he would regret the hypothetical decision, _totally _and without hesitation eat any and all apples he happened to lay his eyes on, _regardless _on whether or not they would plague him for weeks afterward about being a double-agent. At a certain point, he just couldn't be picky.

Then, his brain (which needed some kind of lobotomy, or clever insertion of a purple crayon, to keep similar thoughts from happening _ever _again) helpfully provided him with a lovely mental image of the dead life-eater. And it made him very, very aware of how hungry he was, even though he probably wouldn't seriously consider munching on _that_ even if his life depended on it. Ugh.

"Night," he mumbled, partially to himself. His thoughts were starting to lose their coherence, which was a shiny new feeling. Usually, he was hit over the head or just kind of passed out from sheer exhaustion. These adventure-shenanigans probably weren't very good for his health. Duh, with all the near-death stuff and all.

What if he had another nightmare? The last thing he wanted was to stare into those creepy glow-y eyes again.

Eh. He'd dealt with the creepy little... uh, _twerp, _in real life. At least _his _dreams weren't prophetic. Besides, he could always just visualize Clarisse caving its head in with a nice, pointy sword. Yeah.

Feeling oddly safe next to Clarisse, Green slowly drifted off to sleep, dreaming about burgers.

* * *

><p><strong>Yeah. Sorry there wasn't too much action, but I've been trying to deal with school stuff (which is <em>not fun.<em>) I guess once I get my act together a bit more (and stop being addicted to Worm, which is a web serial that has _taken over _my brain (AKA once I finish it, there is no other way)) I can start working on this during my frees. Anyways, bai! :)_  
><em>**


	13. Vertigo

**Hello. Um. Sorry for the lateness? Is it late if I always do this? Ahem. Whelp, not sure how, but this ended up being at least twice as long as most of my updates, so hopefully that helps. :3**

* * *

><p>For a while, he was drifting. Back and forth like the raft, his dreams rocking and rolling with the tide. Waves of light and color chased one another around his skull, making him feel very, very alone, yet strangely happy. After what seemed like an instant, a hazy knowledge of the waking world - awareness that somehow smelled like salt - began invading his consciousness.<p>

Green's first coherent thought was that someone was talking to him, words that passed through his ears without seeming to reach his semi-conscious mind. For a second, he wasn't sure who. His mind was so fuzzy from sleep that all he registered was a pair of brown eyes and a scowl - which were fairly familiar once the remaining half of his brain woke up. Clarisse poked his shoulder, a bit harder than necessary, and told him to get up. It probably wasn't the first time, although that _might _have been a dream too.

Groaning, he floundered to his feet. He nearly toppled out of the raft, which he _may _have forgotten he was sleeping on. Oops. Luckily for him, the water around them was only about ankle deep, though a bit cold. He found that out the hard way, when his foot instinctively stuck out sideways and plunged into the water.

"Walk much?" Clarisse asked.

"But I wasn't walking..." he mumbled, genuinely confused and still not really awake. Clarisse didn't dignify him with a response.

Finally, Green managed to force his other foot into the water. He waded the rest of the way onto the beach, took a step, and then blanked out.

Dimly, he noticed he wasn't standing up anymore. He felt the fall, but... didn't. It was like he was having one of _those _dreams, where he'd just started to drift off when he'd dreamt of tipping over and sat bolt upright in his bed, heart racing. Except, he didn't wake up, or even care much at all about falling. He was dimly aware of it, but didn't want to move, or try to catch himself, or even stick out a hand to take the brunt of it. The fall was _inevitable,_ and he somehow wasn't worried about the pain he knew would come if he hit his head on the way down, like it was happening to a stranger.

He felt his head hit something hard, and realized in a vague sort of way that Clarisse was yelling his name... but it all felt hazy, like he was dreaming himself and watching from outside through a grimy window, his senses muted.

Gradually, as she slapped his arms and shouted at him, he came back to himself. Blinked. Like he was in a memory, something that happened a week ago - he _knew _what was going to happen, even though he didn't. Everything felt obvious, beyond change because he'd already seen it. But he could really feel it as Clarisse shook his shoulder, yelling at him to get up.

He tried to talk, slurred the words. Tried again. "Hng?"

"Green! What happened?!"

Good question. He shook his head, trying to focus, which was hard because he was fairly sure he'd just hit his head on a rock or something.

When he tried to think about what had just happened, he hit a wall of confusion and couldn't quite figure out why he was lying on the ground. He could vaguely remember the standing up part, and the falling bit, but everything in between was just... blank.

As he lay there, getting slapped in the face, which was an _awful _way to treat someone who had just blacked out, he slowly started thinking again. He fell... must've passed out for a second, which was worrying.

"Hey! What happened?!" Clarisse demanded again, poking him hard between the eyes.

"Uh?" If he were to _guess, _now that his brain was functioning again, he'd say it was a combination of hunger, thirst, and blood loss, but he didn't really want to string that many syllables together at the moment. He breathed in and out, and the pain in his skull slowly subsided. This whole hitting his head business was definitely not good for his health. What if he'd just _broken _his brain somewhere along the way, and it had started shorting out?

Also...

_Crap._ He just fainted. Clarisse was never, _ever _going to let him hear the end of it. What if she called him _Sleeping Beauty _or something?!

"I think I'm okay now," he said, after sitting up and not feeling nauseous or dizzy.

"Good, you scared me."

Wait, did she just-

"I thought I'd have to carry you or something. Seriously, get up _Rosebud_." As if to accentuate the point, she prodded him - a lot less gently than he would expect considering he'd just almost knocked himself out - with her shoe. Green thought it still seemed suspiciously touchy-feely for Clarisse, but he had more important things to worry about, like not falling on his face again as she tugged him to his feet.

Also... Rosebud. He wasn't sure whether he was more emasculated (not that he was all that macho to begin with) or just upset by the implication that he would be saying his last words, but he did _not _approve.

He followed tentatively as she swatted her way through thick, emerald-green foliage that he kept apologizing to, though not out loud, especially with Clarisse within earshot.

They traveled over flat, grassy terrain through a lush meadow, Green sipping at a water bottle Clarisse had in her pocket. The water was _hot, _but it was the first thing he'd had to drink since they'd sailed to Abby's island. There were even a few berry bushes along their path, which he recognized from before. He ate them greedily, pulling whole handfuls away at once and stuffing them in his mouth, spitting the seeds wherever he thought a new plant might flourish.

He was still hungry. Now, he got a whole new look at how it felt to really be starving. Every snapping twig seemed to set off an alarm in his hyper-aware brain, as if his ears were shouting "FOOD?" Still, he felt tired after only about a hundred yards. His feet dragged on the soft turf beneath them, as they made their way along a near-vertical path up the mountainside.

It really was beautiful here. Grass almost impossibly green, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky - which was a bit _too _clear for his taste, letting the sun beat down on them and get in his eyes. Picturesque palm trees and even a massive ravine decorated the island as well, with a few sheep scattered near a tiny rope bridge. A _rope bridge_. He'd never actually seen one, but he knew from the stories older campers told that it was just about the biggest clue of evil since bloody chains in the basement. And person-sized cauldrons.

After about ten minutes of wishing he was brave enough to ask for a rest, they finally reached the top of a fair-sized hill. He collapsed immediately, sitting down and leaning against a large boulder, hugging his knees to his chest.

"Seriously?!" Clarisse asked from above him, looking down at him with an expression that looked more like annoyance than pity.

He didn't reply, but someone _else_ did.

"Who are you?" asked a deep, gravely voice, making a sound _almost _like a squeak come out of Clarisse, which was a feat in and of itself. Green almost leapt out from behind the boulder, but decided against it when he heard Clarisse's sword clattering to the ground.

"Hey! Give it back!"

He didn't stand a _chance_. No weapon, no plan, and no backup? He'd need to wait for the right opportunity. Risking a glance out from the side of the rock, he saw Clarisse tugging at the iron grip of a Cyclops. Green had thought Tyson was an average height for his kind, but this thing was over ten feet tall, with one bloodshot eye and a lot of muscle. Clarisse glanced his way, as if chiding him for staying behind. He gave her as significant a look as he could, trying to say "Gimme a minute" with his eyes. She seemed to get the message, but the Cyclops wasn't being very forgiving of his lack of plan.

"Demigods good eating," Polyphemus said, as if to himself. "Good thing I was boiling sheep. The pot is all ready!"

Green tried really, really hard not to laugh at the realization that he had an actual _pot _for roasting heroes over, which was even worse than the rope bridge_, _though the word _eating_ helped sober him a bit. What to do... Grover wouldn't be too much help, since he was likely unarmed too. Green, well, he was probably _more _useless, what with being so malnourished.

_We need a miracle, _he thought pointedly. Maybe one of the gods would hear him.

Carefully, making sure to stay a long way away and duck behind rocks and trees, Green followed Polyphemus toward his lair. Maybe if he met up with Grover he could charm some vines around the Cyclopes' legs, buy some time for Clarisse to... crap, her sword was back at the cliff. _Good going, _he thought sarcastically at himself.

"It's been long time since last demigod visited," Polyphemus said, not seeming to care about Clarisse's struggles and occasional foul language. "And just in time for wedding feast!"

If he hadn't been in the middle of a life or death situation, Green might have laughed at that. The idea of Grover as a bride was kind of funny, mostly because his hooves would _totally _show under a wedding dress. Or would they? Either way, there was no way Polyphemus wouldn't notice the horns.

Finally, the Cyclops turned around a rather convenient boulder and stopped. For a moment, Green wondered what he was doing - then he rounded the corner and saw The Pot. It was big enough to warrant capitol letters, with smooth cast-iron sides.

"Wifey! Help boil water for supper!"

Grover's voice echoed faintly from behind the boulder. Behind the... _oh._

Leaping out of the way just in time, Green watched from behind a small bulge in the cliff (Which definitely wouldn't have hid him if he wasn't half skeleton) as Polyphemus tugged the _enormous _rock he'd been hiding behind out of the way, with about as much effort as Green would need to move a dead cat. Dead cat? That was a bit weird, even for him, and now he was imagining _eating _cats. Either way, direct combat would get him very, very dead.

It was also disturbing how easily he hefted a squirming Clarisse over the pot as Grover stoked the already blazing fire beneath it, a look of terror on his face. Green wasn't sure how Polyphemus had missed the _extremely _goat-like hair on his "bride's" face, which the veil did a horrible job of hiding... though maybe it had something to do with getting his eye poked out by Odysseus.

Green watched, his plans crashing down around his ankles, as Polyphemus tied Clarisse to a massive wooden arch that spanned the pot, hanging perilously close to the now bubbling water.

"Coward!" Clarisse shouted, as Green squeezed further into his little alcove. "Gimme back my sword and I'll take you with one hand behind my _back!_

Crap, he needed to do something. Polyphemus seemed to be a bit confused as to how he wanted to cook her. His setup looked like he was torn between boiling and roasting, and he was regarding it with folded arms.

Then, Green glanced up, looking for something, _anything _useful, and saw... two spots of color, one black and one blonde. A grin slowly spread across his face.

"Hmm," Polyphemus mumbled. "Eat girl now, or wait for wedding feast? What does wifey think?"

Somewhere in the back of his brain, a little bit of gray matter that wasn't _nearly _as concerned about the situation as is should've been was quietly sniggering.

Clarisse was _less _quiet.

"Wife? Who, _Grover?"_

Crap! Green made a frantic neck-slicing gesture with his finger, but since he couldn't actually poke his head out around the cliff face he was hiding behind without Polyphemus seeing him, it was basically pointless.

"What Grover?" Polyphemus asked, confused.

Green pondered jumping out from his hiding spot and yelling _"THIS GROVER!", _but didn't know how it would be at all productive. Grover still couldn't do all that much, since he was unarmed and wearing a wedding dress, which had to be _the worst thing ever made _for running around and fighting monsters. Besides, the big reveal might distract Polyphemus or something.

Still, the element of surprise wasn't nearly as effective when you were Green. Maybe he should- too late.

"The satyr!" Clarisse replied, loudly and seemingly without a single inkling of how horribly she was screwing up pretty much any chance of getting her away from the boiling water.

"Oh!" Grover said in a falsetto that sounded a bit like an angry kitten. "The poor thing's brain must be boiling from the water! Take it down, dear!"

Grover _might _have been trying to do too many things at once. Just denying it would probably have been better.

Polyphemus still looked confused. He squinted at Clarisse, scratching his head and saying, "What satyr? Satyrs are good eating. You bring me a satyr?"

Green was a bit frustrated at that point. It was super convenient that Polyphemus seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake... but Clarisse had apparently decided that she should give the poor man-eater a fair shot and hand him all their aces.

"No, you idiot! _That _satyr, right _there. _The one in the wedding dress."

He wanted to start banging his head against the rock wall at that point, but she hadn't _yet _informed Polyphemus about where he was hiding. Actually, he almost half-expected Polyphemus to go "I don't see any snacks in wedding dresses!" and scratch his head again. Unfortunately, he wasn't _that _dumb. Otherwise... well, there was missing the obvious, and there was missing the obvious _on purpose._

The Cyclops reached out and snatched the wedding veil off of Grover in one violent tug, staring at him with his head cocked slightly to one side and his massive, bloodshot eye narrowed. How Polyphemus had missed the horns and goatee, Green had no idea, unless Grover had refused to take off the dress _at all._ Which... well, to be fair, maybe that_ was _how it worked. It wasn't like he'd ever been to a wedding.

"I don't see so good, since the other hero stabbed me in the eye... but you're no lady Cyclops!"

Grover seemed a bit too scared to say "duh."

Then, it got a bit weird. Polyphemus reached out and tore the dress off of Grover, and Green sent a silent prayer of thanks to the fates that he'd been wearing a t-shirt and jeans under it, because he _so _didn't need to see that. Grover ducked a vicious swipe from the Cyclops and backed up a few paces, bleating nervously.

What could he do?! If he thought he had a chance in a million of taking on the groom, he might've jumped out... but he'd probably be better off curling up in a ball and wishing for Zeus to just smite all his enemies. Wait longer? What would _that _accomplish?

"Stop!" Grover protested, backpedaling frantically as blow after blow missed him by inches. "D-don't eat me raw! I have a recipe!"

"Recipe?" asked Polyphemus, with not _nearly _as much skepticism as Green would've expected.

"Oh, yes! You could serve me with... m-mango chutney, and get the mangos right here!"

Grover was making Green a bit hungry, so-

Green's stomach decided that his brain needed to remember that dire times like these required a certain amount of sensitivity, and that certain topics could trigger _imminent catastrophe_ in the form of _soul crushing hunger pangs._

On the upside, Polyphemus seemed to be buying it.

"Mango chutney?" he asked, probably to himself. "Grilled satyr with mango chutney?"

Green didn't sigh with relief. That would make noise, and he didn't think he'd be very successful at convincing Polyphemus that he was just a figment of his imagination. Instead, he made a mental note to cheer loudly, once he was back in camp and wasn't in life-threatening danger - for a few months anyway. And eat some mango chutney, whatever that was. He might've been drooling a bit.

"Are you a satyr too?" Polyphemus asked Clarisse.

"No, you idiot! I'm a _girl! _The daughter of Ares!" Next harebrained adventure, Green was bringing a tape recorder. This had some serious blackmail potential, and they weren't even done yet.

Clarisse made some typically Ares threats, telling him all about how well his tongue would fit down his esophagus, and other typical kid stuff. Green also had the vague feeling that he should've been thinking that sarcastically, but... well... the kids at camp half-blood were all a bit over-zealous when it came to violence.

"You got spunk!" the Cyclops announced. "I have to graze sheepsies now. Wedding postponed until tonight."

_No._

"Then we'll eat satyr for the main course!"

_No way._

"But," Grover protested, sounding almost offended, "Who's the bride?"

_This can't be real!_

Polyphemus glanced at Clarisse.

_Holy crap on the Styx!_

Green doubled over, clamping a hand over his own mouth and convulsing a little, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. _Must not laugh, _he thought. _Think of dead puppies._ He stopped trying to laugh. _Okay, too much. Think of happy puppies!_ That did the trick.

Then, he saw Clarisse's expression. It was a work of _art. _Eyes squeezed shut, nose wrinkled, mouth open with lips pulled back in complete and utter disgust.

_Dead puppies dead puppies dead puppies..._

He was in control again. Sort of. Green had the feeling he would think back on this later and fall into an uncontrollable fit of giggles until someone slapped him (probably Clarisse), but that could wait until his life wasn't on the line, in the most _hilarious _way possible.

"Oh _no! _You _can't _be serious, I am _not-_" Clarisse was cut off mid-sentence as Polyphemus snatched her off the cauldron with a disturbing lack of effort, grabbed Grover in his other fist, and tossed them into the depths of his cave.

"I'll be back at sundown for big event!" he said cheerfully, and whistled. A little white tide of wool came streaming out of the opening, headed down the cliff towards the perfect rolling hills to the south.

Polyphemus put a hand on the door, his back toward Green, and he realized in that instant that he had to make a choice. Just before the boulder rolled across the opening, he dove inside, the crack slamming shut so close to his toes he could feel the vibration.

For a second, he felt that "Bond, James Bond" burst of adrenaline that comes from dodging doors and jumping off of moving objects. Then, he realized that he'd just locked himself in a cave. Oops. Although, Polyphemus might re-open the door to check what had just gotten into his sheep cave.

He didn't.

"Green?" Grover asked, open-mouthed.

"Hi!" Green replied, raising a hand awkwardly.

There was a second of stunned silence.

"Oh, yeah, I can talk now." Clarisse heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"I guess it was too much to hope that you'd do something _useful._"

"Uh, sorry," Green replied. Normally he would've tried to give as good as he got, but... well... landing himself in there had been dumb. "But," he continued, lowering his voice, "I think Percy and Annabeth are here."

"Really?" Grover asked, perking up.

"Yeah, I saw them up above us."

"Perfect. Wise girl and Prissy outside, goat boy and useless inside. We're dead."

"You do know that _wise girl _isn't an insult, right?"

"Shut up, _dandelion."_ Aw _crap,_ that was probably going to stick. Even Grover giggled a little.

"Hey! I'll have you know that I am at _least _a rose."

That had sounded way better in his head.

"I mean... thorns."

"Nice try," Clarisse rolled her eyes as she spoke, her voice sounding amused, with just a dash of condescension.

"So," Green said, clapping his hands and turning to Grover. He needed to change the subject. "Can we see your dress?"

* * *

><p>After a few hours of making incredibly awkward small talk and half-hearted escape plans with Clarisse and Grover, Green finally gave up and leaned against one wall, closing his eyes.<p>

Grover and Clarisse were slumped against the opposite end of the room, him fast asleep and her glaring sullenly at nothing. The satyr had given up on trying to remove the ropes from her wrists with a pair of kindergarten scissors about an hour ago, without any success.

Suddenly, through one ear that was pressed to the very uncomfortable wall, he heard a low rumbling. The entrance?

Green gestured frantically at Clarisse, who gave him an odd look. He pointed in the direction of the noise, waving his arms up and down.

"You can talk, you know," she pointed out.

"Fine, whatever! Entrance is opening!" He'd thought he'd been pretty clear, anyway. Maybe Clarisse just wasn't good at nonverbal communication.

They stood up, Clarisse poking Grover awake, and cautiously edged through tunnels and corridors toward the sound of Polyphemus saying things like, "Good boy, Dusty! I'll be eating you soon!"

Finally, they reached the door to the main cave. Cautiously, not really wanting to inform Polyphemus of his existence, he peeked his head around the corner. The Cyclops was looking closely at his incoming flock, and Green noticed a small protrusion on the wall nearby. Wanting to get a better look, and maybe take a dive through the entrance, he quietly sneaked into the room.

He was immediately bowled over by a sheep. An enormous, fluffy sheep about half the size of most of the herd, either a baby or a runt. One would really think that, in a life or death situation, Clarisse would be a little less prone to snickering at him. Then again, he'd just proven that in a game of football against the raw materials for a Christmas sweater, which didn't even have opposable thumbs, Green would lose. At least she snickered quietly, without drawing the attention of the Cyclops.

As more cuddly animals streamed into the cave, Polyphemus continued talking to them, calling them by name. One, in particular, was called Widget. From his position curled up on the ground (He was very thankful the sheep were too docile to trample him), Green could see Percy clinging to its belly for dear life, giving him a wide-eyed "You're alive!" look. He waved, grinning guilelessly.

Then, just as Polyphemus put his hands on the massive boulder, Annabeth's voice yelled, "Hello ugly!"

Green's smile widened despite himself.

"Who said that?" demanded Polyphemus.

"Nobody!" He could hear her smirking, and knew immediately what she was doing. Thalia had mentioned this story once, where Odysseus had told the Cyclops his name was Nobody to trick him. And then poked out his eye with... he forgot what exactly. Something maybe burning, probably pointy, and definitely unpleasant.

The Cyclops looked somewhat ticked off. "I remember _you!"_ he bellowed, whipping his head from side to side, searching for the source of the voice. Green wasn't all that worried - Annabeth had her invisibility hat, plus his eyesight wasn't the best. Not to mention, she could probably hold her own in a fight. Not a _fair _fight, per-se (The thing was ten feet tall), but she was smart enough that it wouldn't be a fair fight.

"You're too _stupid _to remember anybody, much less Nobody!" Annabeth taunted.

It might've been true, too. The guy didn't seem to notice that his rival had changed genders. Still, Green was starting to wonder why she was deliberately trying to make a hulking giant angry. Polyphemus' only response was to grab the door boulder, making him wince - he didn't exactly enjoy the reminder of how strong this guy was - and lobbed it in her general direction. Ah. He'd have to remember to high-five her for that later.

For a moment, there was an awful silence. Then, "You still can't aim, either!"

Polyphemus made a horrible animal roaring noise and looked around for another rock to throw. "I will _kill _you!"

"Come find me, and you can _try!" _Green was impressed with just how much condescension she managed to put into just seven words, especially since he'd never heard her use that tone before. Playfully, yeah, when she was teasing Percy, but now it made him cringe a little.

The Cyclops did more than cringe. He gave an angry grunt and barreled down the hill, arms flailing around him as though he was hoping he'd hit her by accident.

Percy dismounted, with a lot more grace than Green probably would've managed, and sprinted over to them. Clarisse emerged from the passage behind them and pulled them inside, out of Polyphemus' line of sight.

"You're here!" he said, grinning.

"Duh," Clarisse grunted.

"Come on, Annabeth's distracting them," Percy continued, ignoring Clarisse.

"I thought you were supposed to be blown up?" Clarisse told him, with her usual bluntness.

"So were you. We thought you drowned," he replied, glancing at Green.

"Nah. I... uh... met a weird blue-haired dude. He made a hurricane."

Percy's eyes widened, and he asked, "A son of Poseidon?"

"Nope. I will explain later, because I don't totally get it either and we're on a schedule."

"Alright. Hold still," Percy directed the last bit at Clarisse, who turned around to offer him her bound hands. One slice with Riptide and the ropes were on the floor.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"You're welcome." Percy hesitated before asking his next question, as if afraid of the answer. "Was anyone else on your lifeboat?"

"No, just me. I met up with Dandelion here on some gods-forsaken island in the middle of nowhere."

"We fought a... thing," Green added, trying and failing to find words. He hadn't liked that island much, to say the least.

Percy looked down. It only took a second for Green to realize why, and he immediately said, "Tyson's fine. He's a son of Poseidon too, remember? I bet he's walking around on the bottom of the ocean somewhere, being guided to shore."

He didn't look convinced. Then again, Green was starting to worry too. At first, he'd figured both Percy and Tyson were more or less guaranteed to survive the initial shipwreck. Still, he'd never actually _seen _Tyson breathe underwater, and the guy didn't seem to be able to control water the way Percy could. A sinking feeling was settling in his gut, despite his efforts to ignore it.

Just as he'd started to get properly anxious for Tyson, a crashing noise echoed from the front of the cave, followed by a girl's scream.

As if someone had just pulled a rope tied around his waist, Green shot out of the shelter of the doorway and into the massive cavern.

"I got Nobody!" bellowed Polyphemus gleefully, shaking his empty fist. Then, a familiar-looking baseball cap fell to the ground, revealing Annabeth hanging limply by her legs from the monster's grip.

"Nasty invisible girl!" he chastised. "Already have feisty one for wife. Will eat you instead, grilled with mango chutney."

Green lunged forward, only to be grabbed around the waist by Clarisse and swung back into hiding.

_"We need a plan," _she hissed. Green did a double-take. Did that just happen? Had _he _just been the one told they needed a plan? By _Clarisse? _It was enough to snap him out of his temporary fit of recklessness, and he stayed put.

The anger came back full force as he realized that Annabeth wasn't moving nearly as much as she should be. She struggled a little, but there was a lot of blood coming from a nasty gash on her forehead and she looked dazed. _Right. Don't flip out, don't flip out, need to think first..._

"I'll rush him," Percy whispered, fist clenched. "We have a ship on the other side of the island, take Grover and-"

"No _way," _Clarisse and Grover said at the same time. Green didn't even bother answering, he just gave Percy a '_Really?' _look and refused to move a muscle.

Clarisse grabbed a spear from a nearby wall of sheep collectables, which Polyphemus had in heaps all over for some ungodsly reason, and Grover snatched up a nearby thighbone. He looked a little sick at the idea of fighting with it, which Green understood, but also wore a determined expression. Green's weapon of choice was a large wooden hat stand, once he'd tossed the various sheep-themed caps onto the ground. It was sort of staff-like, if he ignored the random hooks sticking out of it.

"We'll take him together," Clarisse asserted, and Grover and Green nodded in agreement.

"Alright," Percy said, "Attack plan Macedonia!"

"What?" asked Green, flabbergasted. He wasn't exactly part of the regular training exercises, seeing as he'd spent his first year at camp mostly alone in the forest and his second being rather annoyed with everyone for accusing him of trying to kill his best friend. Hmm. _Note to self, be more social._

"Get around him and attack from behind," Clarisse told him.

"Okay," he replied, grateful for the explanation.

"Hey!" Percy yelled, uncapping Riptide. "Ugly!"

Green wasn't exactly sure how helpful he'd be, seeing as he could be replaced with an angry chipmunk and do more damage, but he sidled around the Cyclops, who was rather preoccupied with Percy, and headed around to the back.

"Another one?" the Cyclops said incredulously. Then, he turned his head and stared at Green. "Who are you?"

"I'm Nobody!" Percy shouted. Polyphemus promptly forgot all about the idiot who wanted to attack with a hat stand and turned to face the actual fighters. "Put down my friend! I'm the one who insulted you!"

Polyphemus must've been a bit deaf too, because he immediately accepted the new Nobody without a single thought to how incredibly different their voices were.

"You... are Nobody?"

"That's right, you smelly bucket of... nose drool!"

Green smacked himself in the face. It was one of those things that he just did compulsively in some situations.

"Now," Percy continued, on a roll now, "Let her go!"

_Oh crap!_ Green realized, a second after it was too late. It was one of those things you should never do: tell a monster that wanted to kill you to drop one of your friends while he's holding her head-first ten feet above a lot of solid rock.

He sprinted toward his now motionless friend, ignoring the Cyclops completely. It didn't really matter much, the guy was already charging after Percy. As he slid to the floor, Green started swearing. He wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying, it was just a constant stream of everything he'd heard anyone say. There were bits of Ancient Greek, particularly creative English, the occasional spot of Latin and even something in German he'd learned from one of the Apollo campers.

Annabeth was lying on the ground, and he was feeling very not-good about the angle of her neck. The noise of the battle was getting very quiet, and Green felt a strange sense of calm. Neck maybe broken. Definitely a bad concussion, there was a _lot _of blood on her head. He didn't want to, but couldn't help thinking that this might be something _permanent. _Brain damage or paralysis.

Green felt like he was sleepwalking, just outside reality, that this wasn't really happening. As if he were asleep, his thoughts moved on without him, on autopilot. Not much he could do here, he wasn't a doctor and he didn't have ambrosia. So, he was going to_ kill _Polyphemus. Chop him up into tiny, tiny pieces and throw them into Tartarus. It was like when he was facing Luke - something hot and painful in the pit of his stomach that he needed to get _out, _all the while feeling deceptively normal. Some part of him noticed that he was definitely _not _as calm as he felt.

The worst part was that the Cyclops probably hadn't even meant to do it. He'd just stopped caring what happened to her, after he'd decided she wasn't Nobody. His hands were shaking a little, as he stood up, looked at Polyphemus, and _charged._

Heedless of his own safety, he yelled something that might've made _Clarisse_ wince a little - he hadn't been looking to closely - used the hat stand to vault himself into the air, and tackled the Cyclops. Well, that had been the plan. Unfortunately, he weighed maybe seventy pounds and Polyphemus was twice as tall and built like a bear.

All Green could do was hang there and smash the hat rack uselessly against the Cyclops' thick skull, shouting at him, at _it,_ and trying to break something, _anything._ He wanted to _hurt _it, but all he did was break his weapon in two. When that wasn't enough, he bruised his knuckles, broke a nail tearing at the monster's scalp in a mind-numbing rage that left him feeling far, far away from his body. It was pointless, and he was helpless. Impotent. Nothing he did left a mark, just thin pink lines as his tiny fleshy hands tore at the unyielding hide of Polyphemus.

Then, the ground disappeared.

Green and Polyphemus tumbled through the air before crashing into cold, hard stone. His brain had about half a second to go "What?" before he fell again, _sideways,_ and all the breath rushed out of his lungs. The rage lessened, a little, replaced by confusion. It took a moment to figure out what he was looking at, but he realized that the entrance to the cave was somehow in the wrong place. Stalagmites and stalactites were protruding from the walls, not the floor and ceiling. Below them, sticking out from what was now the wall, was another horrific_ thing._

The most offensive part of its anatomy was, without doubt, the neck. Vultures had gross rubbery pink things at their throats, for whatever reason, but this thing had turned it up to eleven. Creases and folds, warty and blood-red, the skin at the neck just sort of gave up on life and started sagging down, like a loose-fitting scarf.

On top of that, it looked like it was _praying._ Tiny hands with thin, almost dainty fingers and hooked claws were held right up to its chin, and they were _stroking _the neck-wattle. Little lines of white would trace the paths of the claws as they raked the flesh, disappearing almost instantly, only to be replaced a second later.

A bizarre combination of a bulging belly and ribs that were visible through its skin made it even uglier, with an odd purple-green hue to its scaly hide and bulging, bloodshot eyes.

It wasn't as bad as the life-eater, so Green _didn't _scream. On the other hand, he sort of wanted a cold shower. Not to mention... _he was hanging from the wall._

_What? _he thought, no longer distracted by yet another nasty nemesis. Nasty nemesis? What? Had it made his brain glitch out?

Without warning, they fell, _again,_ but this time Polyphemus landed partly on his leg, pinning him. That was going to hurt in the morning. As far as he could tell, they were on another wall, a stalactite a couple inches from his face.

_Oh, _he thought, finally putting two and two together. _It messes with gravity. Fun._

Green was woefully unequipped for handling weird vulture things that could break the most basic laws of physics.

Worse still, everyone else was getting thrown around too. Annabeth was jammed in between two stalagmites, or tites, he wasn't sure which way was up anymore, head lolling in the direction of new down. If there was anything worse than being dropped on your head by a giant, it was being tossed around like this. Percy was curled over another spiky rock formation, gripping the point of it and holding himself up, inches from being impaled, eyes huge. Whatever this thing was, it had basically turned the cave into a giant washing machine.

Clarisse and Grover had gotten tangled up in the entrance to the rest of Polyphemus' lair, her gripping a bit of rock jutting out from the doorway with the him hanging off her ankles.

His brain was on overdrive. Half of it was still telling him to get up and start tearing into Polyphemus, but the other half had kindly informed him that there were other priorities at the moment. Bottling up this much rage might not be a good idea in the long run, but he'd rather not be dead.

"What the-" Percy gasped, finally catching up enough to speak.

The creature stared directly at Green, and lunged. It was still oriented in the original down-up format, he realized, but leapt up much farther than should have been possible and grabbed his ankle. Then, it smoothly rotated itself until it was standing on the wall, their floor, and bit down on his calf.

"Gah!" he yelped, more from surprise than pain. It had no teeth, it seemed, just gums. Gross, slimy gums. "Get off!"

Claws wound themselves around his leg, digging into the skin. The bite started to smart a bit then, tingling and burning like...

_ACID! NOPE, NOPE, I AM DONE! _Frantically, Green kicked out and smashed the thing in the jaw with his free leg, which Polyphemus had graciously rolled off of, if only in an attempt to be far, far away from whatever was trying to eat him. It ignored him, and went on sucking on his leg.

Green wasn't proud of it, but he started shrieking at that point, beating at the vein-y purple face with his hands as he felt the burn on his leg growing more and more painful. This was somewhat new, and he decided right then and there that he'd much rather be boiled by a Cyclops than slowly dissolved by a giant cross between a praying mantis and a toad.

"Help! GAH!" He was really screaming now, as he felt the burning sensation creeping up his leg, through his veins. Blood leeched into the monster's mouth, and began to leak out from between its lips.

Percy yelled something very unfriendly and charged at it with Riptide.

It promptly dropped him onto the other wall. He twisted midair, dodging another stalactite and avoiding landing on his head.

Speaking of which... Annabeth needed medical attention.

Then, Green realized that he was an idiot and that they were sort of on a quest for the most powerful healing object in the world, which, if it worked on trees, should probably be able to fix Annabeth, or else he was calling _shenanigans _and blackmailing Apollo until he helped. He just needed to end this quickly, and-

His thoughts blanked out. There was only agony as the muscle in his calf came into contact with whatever this _thing _had in its mouth. Without any intervention from his brain, his hand came up and poked the beast in the eye.

_That _it noticed. It didn't drop him, but it loosened its grip enough that Green was able to wriggle free. He then plummeted up and landed on a disgruntled Percy.

His pillow made a pathetic "Oof" sound as his elbow drove into his stomach, and Green rolled off as soon as he'd realized what had happened.

"Sorry!" he said, glancing around. His leg still hurt, but the open air seemed to be helping a bit. Well, a _lot _of things were probably better for you than an acid bath. Glancing down, he fought off the urge to throw up. His leg was a _mess, _with a four inch long strip of flesh turned red and purple, with a spot in the middle that was oozing a lot of blood. He ripped off a bit of his shirt, something he'd been doing a lot lately, and tied it around the wound.

For the moment, the critter seemed to be waiting for something. It just stared at him. What...

Polyphemus grabbed his arm, and hauled him into the air.

"Oh _come on!" _he yelped. Two big bads at once? This was unfair! Shenanigans!

Then, there was a _crunching _noise, as something heavy came down on Polyphemus's head. Green was thoroughly confused for a moment, until he twisted around and, in perfect unison with Percy, yelled "Tyson!"

They fell again.

"STOP THAT!" Green shouted at the top of his lungs. "Why can't you at least have the _common decency_ to _wait_ until we are done with _this._" There was a moment of awkward silence, during which he realized that he'd just made the unfortunate mistake of assuming that big bads could be reasoned with.

"I don't like you," Polyphemus said.

"The feeling is _mutual, _but can we at least focus for _five minutes _on the praying mantis thing?!" He fully intended to kill the guy later, but why not band together against a stronger foe?

"You scratched me," he pointed out, somewhat nonplussed.

"You _dropped _my _friend. _So shut up and _fetch," _he said, brandishing a finger at the other monster and hoping that he wasn't as completely stupid as he thought he sounded.

"Hey!" Polyphemus sounded more indignant than angry, which might've been fair. Suddenly, inspiration hit him.

"_That's _the real Nobody!" he cried. Never hurts to try, right?

The monster, for its part, seemed to be waiting on the other end of the new floor. Which, incidentally, coincided with the old floor. Unfortunately, the creature was blocking the door.

Polyphemus looked at it for a moment, the gears turning in his brain. He obviously didn't much notice gender differences, so _hopefully _he'd just shrug and roll with it.

"Die, Nobody!" shouted the Cyclops, dropping Green and leaving a somewhat astonished Tyson standing there with a heavy plank in his hand. Percy laughed, a bit hysterically, and Clarisse just rolled her eyes.

As Polyphemus advanced menacingly on the acid monster, Green dashed over to where Annabeth was still stuck between a pair of stalactites, fifteen feet up in the air.

"Uh, little help?" Then, gravity changed again and he was forced to grab one of the rock formations and twist himself to the right, to avoid landing on top of her or being impaled.

"Not you!" he scolded.

Clarisse gave a derisive snort, advancing on their new enemy. This was somewhat complicated by the fact that it was still on the ceiling, formerly known as the floor. He was getting tired of this.

_Right, _he thought, turning to Annabeth. _Crap._

He checked her pulse, found it. Faint, but that was fine as long as Polyphemus would _hurry up._

The elder Cyclops had found an odd ally in Tyson, who was currently sitting on his shoulders and trying unsuccessfully to grab the acid-monster, which was surprisingly agile considering how ungainly it looked. Then, it stared directly at Tyson and _spat._

To Green's relief, his friend dodged it, barely, by swinging himself down until he was hanging by his legs. Unfortunately, Polyphemus didn't move quite fast enough, and the spittle caught him square in the face.

_"NOBODY!" _he bellowed, dumping a startled Tyson onto the ground and lunging at where his attacker had been before he was blinded. Again. Green _almost _felt sorry for him. Either way, Polyphemus now had next to zero chance of catching the acid-monster, which was now casually hopping from stalagmite to stalagmite, having turned its gravity sideways.

Green shook his head in irritation, at himself for getting distracted. Him staring wasn't going to sway the fight at all, and he really needed to do something to secure Annabeth before the acid-monster started playing with gravity again. At the moment, it seemed content to bounce around the room avoiding Polyphemus and his ever-mounting rage, but it might soon decide to stop running and finish him off.

Looking down, he decided that his shirt would never, _ever _be wearable ever again. It was stained with blood, some of it his and some of it probably Annabeth's, covered in dirt, stiff with salt, ended at about his belly button after he'd taken most of it for bandages, and smelled like life-eater brains. So, he took it off, tore it into strips, and used it to tie her waist to one of the stalactites. Green decided that he should probably try to hang on as well, to get her down later. For now though, she wouldn't get thrown around any more than she already had.

That done, he went back to watching the fight, trying to ignore the agony in his leg.

Polyphemus was still chasing the acid-monster, with Tyson desperately trying to follow its zig-zagging path through the cave. Whenever either of them happened to come within arms reach of it, the cave reoriented. Green found himself alternately lying on his back, stretched along the length of the massive stone spike he had latched onto, hanging by one very tenuous handhold on the base of said stalactite, and trying very hard not to let the business end drive itself into his stomach. He didn't _think _it would break the skin, but it would definitely not feel good.

As he watched, fascinated, Tyson leaned back and threw his weapon. The heavy plank whirled end over end through the air, straight toward the monster. It didn't even glance at him, but the board suddenly veered off to the side, before it hit the wall and stuck there.

"Stay _put,_" shouted Clarisse, jabbing a spear at it. It responded by spitting again, missing her face but glancing off her shoulder. Her shirt started to steam, and she swore and tore off the sleeve. Percy advanced from behind, with Tyson taking its left and a flailing Polyphemus stopping it from escaping to the right. It went up.

Green, it so happened, was positioned fifteen feet directly above it, too busy clinging to the stalactite to dodge as it hurtled towards him. It gave a _disgusting _smile as the two of them were forced together by two opposing gravities, and bit down on his arm. Not much caring whether or not he would fall fifteen feet directly onto his head, he wriggled free, only to be caught around the waist in two surprisingly strong arms.

It clamped down on his_ neck._

"AHH! GET-" he shouted, before it shifted its grip so that its arms were around his diaphragm and _squeezed._ The breath went out of his lungs in a pathetic huff, like some sick joke. Ha ha, the mute kid gets his voice back, only to immediately die a horrible death without even getting to scream while he's devoured. The universe obviously had an awful sense of humor.

"Green!" yelled Percy, standing beneath him and staring up. There wasn't a lot he could do, what with not being tall enough. Until, of course, he clambered up onto Tyson's back and started jabbing with the spear Clarisse handed him.

Just as he felt his skin beginning to peel, the monster let up. It... didn't want to kill him?

Then, it _licked him._ He felt the rasp of its tongue as it ran it along the back of his head, his neck and shoulders, making them tingle slightly.

"Ew! EW! GET OFF!" he shouted uselessly, before it squeezed the breath out of him again.

Percy and Tyson had only just started getting a rhythm down, in which Tyson jumped just as Percy thrust forward with the spear, when the pair of them suddenly started falling. Directly towards Green. With the business end of a spear between them.

Frantically jerking the weapon out of the way, Percy _almost _managed to grab his hand before he and Tyson both crashed to the ground _again._ Tyson's legs went out from under him, although he didn't look badly hurt, and he and his half-brother landed in a tangled heap on the cave floor.

Green felt himself being rotated around, nose to nose with the monster.

Its eyes bulged out so far from its face that they almost touched his forehead. He noticed that they weren't, as he had first thought, all whites and pupils. There were thin rims of color in them, mismatched. One was blue, the other red. Small scales stood out on its cheeks, glistening in the light of the late-afternoon sun that was slanging in through the cave's mouth. If they weren't attached to such an _abomination, _they might have been beautiful.

A black tongue ran itself over his forehead and cheeks, then his _mouth, _which he had the sense not to open. It was all he could do to hold in... well, not so much his breakfast. He hadn't _had _breakfast, but he was definitely holding in_ something,_ as it drooled all over him while a ghastly smile spread across its face.

Then, it froze. Those disgusting eyes bugged out even _more,_ if that was possible, and it convulsed, clutching him even closer, before letting go. He plunged down, landed painfully on his right arm.

His head hit the ground, and for a moment his head felt... odd. Detached. Pain from his head, his leg, his probably broken arm, all compounded into this strange sense of unreality. It felt like he was floating, comfortable, when that was about as far from the truth as humanly possible.

The last thing he saw was blood, red blood, blossoming from the creature's chest as it fell toward him. In that one moment, it looked almost human. Then it hit him, and he blacked out.

* * *

><p><strong>Yeah, I googled mango chutney, and I want some. :,( Why you make me so hungry book?!<strong>

**Also...WOAH, this ended up being long! Yay inconsistency! And... sorry about the lateness. By which I mean the half-year it took me to write this. Heh. Well, thank you for bearing with me, even if I pretty much never update, and for reviewing! Makes me feel a ****_lot _****better about the fact that this is publicly accessible on the internet. :)**


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